A MAJOR investment programme in new business is set to bring a staggering £3bn to the north west.

The Department for Trade and Industry is funding eight new business incubation units in the region to turn fledgling ideas into profit and success.

Working through the North West Development Agency, ministers are hoping to replicate the success enjoyed by existing incubator Campus Ventures.

The unit has helped 70 businesses in its six years and already has a long list of success stories to its credit.

Manchester University-based Campus Ventures chairman Jim Keaton believes the new centres will bring in £3bn over the next 10 years.

Incubators give new companies the support to gain private finance and public funding plus a solid company infrastructure.

Before the e-commerce market crashed the corporate worth of companies helped by Campus Ventures was around £1bn, but now stands at around £300m.

The smaller UMIST Ventures, which is a technology transfer unit and works solely with ideas developed from its own departments, was founded in 1989 and has developed 30 companies worth a total of £500m. Currently, Campus Ventures bosses are negotiating with Manchester Metropolitan and Salford Universities as well as Hope Hospital to set up fully-fledged incubator units on their sites.

University links

Mr Keaton said the first of the new centres was likely to be in Barrow and have links with Lancaster University.

‘‘This one could be open by September and the idea is to have them all operating by the middle of next year,’’ he said.

‘‘The second one is planned for Burnley and will probably be linked with the University of Central Lancashire. We are working towards a new textiles incubator to be based at Bolton Institute.

‘‘The NWDA’s regional strategy is to spread the incubation from Greater Manchester across the whole region and link it into science parks as it develops.

‘‘The NWDA has already purchased land for an incubator and science park immediately adjacent to the Daresbury site.

‘‘The whole idea is that there is a huge amount of intellectual property which is linked into Daresbury and that should be funnelled into the incubator and developed there.

‘‘The others are subject to the NWDA finding sites and matching them up to higher or further education partners.’’

Mr Keaton, who has been made the Honourary Doctor of Laws by Manchester University for his work with the incubator, believes they will tender for the management of several of the units.

Campus Ventures is home to 20 young businesses around 25 per cent of which originated at Manchester University.

The success of the approach has been something which the team has pushed at the highest level to garner the extra investment from the government.

Mr Keaton said they had made representations in the House of Commons to Trade Secretary Stephen Byers and explained the benefits to each region.

‘‘We talked in terms of the retention of ideas, preventing them from going abroad and also retaining graduates.’’