Life Sciences Goes Green As Bruntwood SciTech Bags £95M Sustainability-Linked Loan
The life sciences real estate joint venture between Bruntwood and L&G has secured a £95M loan that will allow it to pay less interest if it hits sustainability targets.
Bruntwood SciTech will use the three-year, £95M facility to fund its future growth and investment strategy.
The sustainability-linked loan from NatWest, Lloyds Bank, Santander and HSBC UK extends Bruntwood SciTech’s existing £185M loan, which it agreed with the club in 2019, to £280M.
The company, a 50:50 joint venture between Bruntwood and Legal & General, will use the funding to invest into the ongoing development of the UK’s largest single-site life sciences campus — Alderley Park in Cheshire; as well as Manchester Science Park, Platform in Leeds and the commercial buildings at Circle Square in Manchester.
The funding will also be used to support new acquisitions, such as the recently announced 16.4-acre Melbourn Science Park in Cambridge as well as the development of the Innovation Birmingham Campus and the newly completed Citylabs 2.0 in Manchester, which is already fully let to leading global molecular diagnostics company QIAGEN for its Global Centre of Excellence for Precision Medicine.
Under the new funding package, Bruntwood SciTech will continue to receive a discount on its cost of funding by agreeing to fulfil bespoke sustainability-linked covenants across a number of initiatives including waste and recycling, green energy procurement and a pledge to reduce the energy intensity of its portfolio by more than 10% over the lifetime of the loan.
“We’re continuing to see significant demand for our specialist workspaces and labs and this new funding agreement gives us the platform to accelerate our growth responsibly and sustainably and perfectly aligns with our pledge to be net-zero carbon by 2030,” Bruntwood SciTech CEO Kate Lawlor said.
