This year’s Liverpool City Region Innovation Investment Summit took place at Sci-Tech Daresbury, bringing together a selection of figures focused on helping scaling businesses overcome growth challenges and unlock new opportunities.
Developed by Innovate UK Business Growth and LYVA Labs, in conjunction with the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority, the event saw business leaders, investors, policymakers and advisers from across the region and beyond for a fourth year.
Attendees took part in one of three behind-the-scenes site tours of Sci-Tech Daresbury, covering a range of facilities including the Hartree Centre, Life Science incubation and grow-on lab space (ITAC Bio and Techspace One), and the Campus Technology Hub.
John Leake, business growth director at Sci-Tech Daresbury, welcomed attendees to the campus, introducing its role as a national science and innovation destination.
“What a pleasure to host the 2025 Liverpool City Region (LCR) Innovation Investment Summit at Sci-Tech Daresbury, a national science and innovation campus and a strategic site in the Liverpool City Region’s Life Sciences and Healthcare Innovation Zone,” he said.
“Over the past 20 years, Sci-Tech Daresbury has supported hundreds of high-tech start-ups and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) with business failure rates as low as 7% on campus and consistent sales growth rates of 25% per year or more.
“We absolutely want to be at the heart of an event focusing on what needs to be done to support and accelerate the growing scale up community in the Liverpool City Region and to play our part in achieving this.”
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Steve Stuart, chair of LYVA Labs and founder of the Summit, added: “This is the fourth Innovation Investment Summit and the first to be held outside the Liverpool City centre.
“I am delighted the relationship with the ICAEW Corporate Finance Faculty is going form strength to strength and this bodes well to securing the future Innovation strategy for the City Region, for years to come.
“My personal thanks go to Liverpool City Region Combined Authority (LCR CA) without whose support this event would not be taking place. Plans are now in motion for the October Innovation Summit, which aims to showcase more of Liverpool’s future plans.”
Later in the day, a panel discussion was held on the challenges of scale-up funding, chaired by David Petrie. Panellists included Cassie Doherty of Northern Gritstone, Marc d’Abbadie of River Capital, and Camilla Greenwood of Praetura.
This was followed by a detailed presentation by Professor Simon Bolton of Edge Hill University, exploring what it takes to unlock business growth.
The summit then closed with sector-specific breakout sessions, exploring the challenges and opportunities within advanced manufacturing, health and life sciences, and digital and tech.
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