Baker Street Food & Drink Enterprises will be built on land recently cleared at the corner of Greenock’s Baker Street and Drumfrochar Road and is the second phase of a £2.5m road realignment project currently being delivered by Riverside Inverclyde for Inverclyde Council.

The Baker Street project will see the development of six manufacturing units ranging from 30 to 70 square metres. Aimed at enticing the growth of small and medium-sized food and drink businesses, the building will also include shared office space, storage unit and board room facilities for its tenants as well as shower and change areas.

Ri will also provide a business growth programme to support the tenants, as well as seeking match-funding support for machinery and equipment. By assisting with the transition into Baker Street, the aim is to provide support towards achieving Safe and Local Supplier Approval (SALSA) standard accreditation for the units.

Fiona Maguire, chief executive of Ri, said: “We look forward to working together with Stewart and Shields on constructing and delivering this important incubator hub and regeneration project for Greenock.”

The Baker Street incubator and its other areas of support will be the first of its kind in Scotland, assisting Inverclyde’s growth in the food and drink sector as Scotland aims to double its turnover to £30 billion by 2030.  The development started in October 2018 and is expected to be completed in the summer of 2019.

Stewart & Shields, with its headquarters in Helensburgh with a further site in Port Glasgow, is a well-established contractor which operates across Scotland and the UK. The family-owned company, which is run by the founder’s grandsons, Richard and Mark Shields, provides a building service for private and public sector clients covering all types of projects including new build, refurbishment and conversion works.

Mark Shields, director at Stewart and Shields, said: “We value greatly this further opportunity to work with Ri in delivering this exciting new project.”

The development is due to begin this autumn with a completion date of spring 2019. The Baker Street incubator is being supported by £900,000 from the Scottish Government’s Regeneration Capital Grant Fund (RCGF).

Andrew Bowman, head of business investment at Ri, said: “Ri has targeted the food and drink sector as a fantastic growth opportunity for Inverclyde.

“We have started to promote this pioneering facility nationally and are already seeing interest in the Baker Street hub and all of the available support for the eventual tenants.

“The incubator offers Inverclyde some exciting opportunities, not least the ability to grow the number of food and drink producers in the area alongside the associated jobs.  We hope to see some of the early participants grow to become great success stories in their own right.”

The design team for the Baker Street project is made up by Inverclyde-based Allied Surveyors, Assist Design Architecture, structural engineers Will Rudd Davidson, mechanical engineering firm Rybka and principle design by Brown and Wallace.