Tom Farmer launches iVenture Tuesdays

Sir Tom Farmer will this week kick off the latest attempt at encouraging start-up companies in Scotland with the launch of iVenture Tuesdays.

The Kwik-Fit founder is the first of a number of high achievers lined up to address a monthly series of networking sessions designed to stimulate interest in starting a business among students, researchers and anyone seeking inspiration.

The seminars are free and open to anyone who registers in advance, they will take place on the last Tuesday of every month and will be hosted in various locations around the country.

Farmer, who launched Kwik-Fit in the early 1970s and sold it to Ford, will address several hundred guests at his lecture this Tuesday entitled People Make the Business.

Others expected to address future iVenture Tuesday meetings include Jim McColl, who built the engineering group Clyde Blowers, and Richard and Douglas Hare, the founders of gaming company Outplay Entertainment.

Informatics Vent

Scottish laser manufacturer seals million pound Japanese deal

LASERS manufacturer Edinburgh Instruments (EI) has secured a contract with Japan’s largest technology institute, in a move helping propel it towards a £7.5 million annual turnover target months ahead of schedule.

EI is supplying Tokyo’s flagship Institute of Technology’s research laboratories, through its photonics division, with its PL5 series of gas lasers that have applications, in particular, for homeland security and radar modelling.

Tokyo Tech, as it is known, operates the world-class supercomputer Tsubame 2.0, used to simulate complex systems such as the planets and the financial sector. It has more than 10,000 undergraduate and postgraduate students on its books.

The size of the Japanese deal has not been disclosed, but the Livingston-based firm’s chief executive Alan Faichney says it is one of a series of revenue-boosting new deals.