Rediscover Tayside

Only now, instead of shredded marmalade, adhesive postage stamps and seismography setting the region's pulse rate soaring, it's digital media, bioscience and Midgeaters.

New directions

Today, Tayside is more famous for its Creative Industries than its textiles. Already home to the world's number one ATM company, creators of some of the world's best selling computer games and Scotland's largest Internet Service Provider, Tayside is rapidly becoming an international centre of excellence in Digital Media. A growth spurt encouraged by the proposed 20 million Digital Media Park development in Dundee and the unstinting efforts of Interactive Tayside a promotional partnership between public, private and academic sectors.

So who's breaking new ground today? You don't get much more cutting-edge than Dundee-based Kestrel 3D whose revolutionary scanning technology creates ultra-high resolution three-dimensional colour digital images. These images can then be published on a website, where they can be scrutinised in minute detail, or incorporated into special computer effects in films and electronic games. The potential applications are as varied as the day is long and include educational, industrial, entertainment and medical opportunities. For now though, its actual uses are a little more down to earth. In a move which could pave the way for virtual museum displays, the British Museum is making near-perfect digital copies of ancient clay tablets containing millimetre-deep inscriptions written in cuneiform the oldest type of writing.

Established in July 2002, Kestrel 3D is already working with several of Europe's leading educational and heritage institutions, including the Netherlands' National Museum of Antiquities, the British Museum and the National Museums of Scotland, as well as the BBC, National Grid for Learning and the UK's Curriculum On-Line Programme. It also boasts significant clients in Italy, France, Greece, Spain, Denmark, Belgium and Hong Kong.

Other high-flyers within Tayside's Creative Industries cluster include: Perth-based Ark Computing Solutions, the premier supplier of Microsoft Navision products and services in Scotland who for the last two years have appeared in the Deloitte & Touche Technology Fast 50 list of growing companies; Simian Industries who together with DC Thomson created Beanotown Racing, an adrenalin-packed racing game, featuring ten of the most popular Beano and Dandy characters; and Schedule D, a Dundee-based film and video production company set up in December 2000 with the support of a Prince's Scottish Youth Business Trust loan.

The spice of life

Tayside's economy is as diverse as it is forward-looking. Alongside digital media, you'll find key strengths in bioscience, manufacturing, oil and gas, customer services, food and tourism.

Home to one of the largest life science and research communities in the UK, a brand new 13 million Wellcome Trust Biomedical Research Centre, one of Europe's foremost teaching hospitals, world-renowned universities, research institutes and companies, Tayside is forging a growing reputation in life sciences. A reputation enhanced by the purpose-built 25-acre Dundee Medipark and a planned 9 million Clinical Research Centre. No wonder the University of Dundee was recently voted UK's best scientific workplace (and third best outside the USA) in a survey published in 'The Scientist'.

One of the companies that has grown up in its wake is Dundee-based Axis-Shield which specialises in the development, manufacture and marketing of proprietary diagnostics kits for a variety of diseases. The new 'point of care technology' it's developing will enable doctors to test for and diagnose an even wider array of diseases from a GP's surgery. Recent company announcements include a further crucial contract with US giant Abbott Laboratories and applying to US regulators for clearance of its new diagnostic drug designed to help identify a person's likelihood of developing heart disease. This latest drug adds to more than a dozen already being produced or developed by Axis-Shield.

Other eye-catchers in the Bioscience sector include: DDS Medicines Research Ltd, a market leader in contract research for the pharmaceutical industry; and Perth-based Pleiad Group, a biomedical consultancy which has just opened an office in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Giant leaps

Now for one of the finest examples of local enterprise Texol Technical Solutions Plc. The result of a management and employee buyout, following NCR's announcement that it would be closing down and outsourcing its metal parts operation, Texol began life in 1998 with an existing order book and 3-year contract with NCR. Since then, the workforce has more than doubled in size as the company has grown through a process of careful diversification and active acquisition. Key to its success is the understanding that the better the company's performance, the more each employee/shareholder stands to gain. Texol's latest product shows the extent of this diversification and their inherent canniness. Five feet tall and fuelled by Calor Gas, Texol's eagerly awaited Midgeater attracts that scourge of the summer months, the biting midge, before sucking them inside like a vacuum cleaner into a disposable bag.

Finally, a local company whose products are literally out of this world. Dundee-based TRAK Microwave supplies high reliability microwave and RF components and sub-systems for use in the most demanding applications and environments. Counting many of the world's leading manufacturers of defence electronics, satellite, navigation and wireless communication systems among its clients, a TRAK Microwave component made it onto the first space vehicle to land on Mars. That's progress for you nearly 400 million km of it since the 'Discovery'.