Evotec celebrated the Grand Opening of a new facility, Building 95 (“B95”), on the Company’s Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin Campus at Oxfordshire’s Milton Park on 28th September, 2023. Evotec has had a presence in Abingdon since the Company’s acquisition of Oxford Asymmetry International (OAI) plc in 2000 and today is one of the largest occupiers at Milton Park.
Evotec has developed B95 to accommodate new state-of-the-art biology laboratories, a range of collaborative workspaces and meeting rooms as well as a restaurant for employees. The B95 facility was designed with a particular focus on sustainability, and incorporates air source heat pumps, a demand-based laboratory ventilation system, as well as low energy lighting and appliances. These measures will support Evotec in achieving the company’s carbon neutral targets.
George Freeman MP, Minister of State at the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology said: “The opening of these state-of-the-art new labs is further evidence of the strength of the UK’s £ 94 bn life sciences sector, which adds to the 280,000 jobs the industry already supports nationwide and attracts private investment into local economies. The Oxfordshire cluster is one of the crown jewels of our science and innovation community. The work taking place here will ensure the UK continues to blaze a trail from drug discovery and scale-up all the way through to manufacturing, ultimately delivering new therapies that will transform countless lives, while driving economic growth for the UK.”
Professor Steve Davies, Emeritus Professor at the University of Oxford and academic founder of OAI, unveiled a plaque commemorating the event. The ceremony was also attended by Elizabeth Hodgkin, daughter of British Nobel Prize winning chemist Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin, after whom Evotec’s campus in Abingdon is named.
Dr Werner Lanthaler, Chief Executive Officer of Evotec SE, commented: “Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin Campus is one of Evotec’s fastest-growing fully integrated research and development centres. Building on the early success of OAI, most notably under leadership of Dr Mario Polywka, the site has been pivotal for Evotec’s success as a whole. Mario was a founding chemist of OAI who became the company’s CEO, and subsequently served for many years as Evotec’s COO and Abingdon Site Head. We are grateful that he continues to remain a member of our Supervisory Board to this day.”
Dr Adam Stoten, SVP Academic Partnerships and Head of Evotec’s Abingdon site, commented: “Opening B95 enables us to grow further our business sustainably and we are grateful to our friends and partners who celebrated this milestone together with us today. I would like to express particular gratitude to those who built OAI’s and then Evotec’s presence on the Milton Park site.”
