Zero Carbon Training Centre

Businesses who locate at the Enterprise & Innovation Centre at the £63 million HALO Kilmarnock will be able to collaborate on-site with top Scottish law firm, Anderson Strathern, which has become the first Gold #ROCKME Partner at the ground-breaking development.

Anderson Strathern and the HALO Kilmarnock have launched a two-year partnership that will result in the law firm becoming one of only six Gold Partners in the HALO’s #ROCKME scheme, the only legal firm and the preferred legal services supplier at the world class facility on the site of the former Johnnie Walker bottling plant.  Phase 1 of the project – the four-storey HALO Enterprise & Innovation Centre (HEIC) – is currently under construction and will open its doors in 2021.

The partnership with Anderson Strathern will help the HALO achieve its ultimate vision of being a dynamic commercial, educational, cultural, leisure and lifestyle quarter where people can ‘Live, Work, Learn and Play’. The HALO will also be the first net zero carbon emissions development of its type in Scotland.

As a Gold #ROCKME Partner, Anderson Strathern will have a permanent presence on the Enterprise floor of the HEIC, home to a thriving community of collaborative technical innovation, with high-growth technology businesses collaborating and developing their technology with HALO’s blue-chip commercial partners and world-renowned academic partners.

The law firm will provide drop-in legal sessions and advisory presentations for companies based at the HALO and will offer companies based at the HALO discounted rates for its full range of legal services, including: intellectual property rights protection; commercial contracts; employment; pensions; and HR advisory work; dispute resolution; health & safety law; risk management; and corporate governance and structures.

Anderson Strathern will also benefit from access to the HALO’s Tomorrow’s World Globe – a unique virtual communication facility with weekly international conferencing being streamed into the HALO Enterprise Floor – and to the HALO’s international partner network of technology and innovation hubs; and access to the HALO’s #ROCKME Jewel Box sponsors’ space for meetings, presentations and briefings.

Anderson Strathern joins the HALO’s existing partners – Scottish Power, Barclays, Scottish Business Resilience Centre, East Ayrshire Council, Scottish Enterprise, BT, Iberdrola, Community Pharmacy Scotland, the Digital Health Institute, Construction Scotland Innovation Centre and the UK and Scottish Governments.

Marie Macklin CBE, Founder and Executive Chair of the HALO Urban Regeneration company, said: “Anderson Strathern has a 250-year history of supporting innovative Scottish businesses and I warmly welcome them as a HALO Gold #ROCKME Partner. Together, we’ll support the success stories of the future.

“The start-ups, SMEs and scaling companies that will locate at the HALO will need top quality legal support to help protect their ideas, their services and their products and I am confident that Anderson Strathern will rock their worlds.

“With such strong support from our Gold #ROCKME Partners like Anderson Strathern, the HALO will lead the way in tomorrow’s world by delivering sustainable, long-term economic and social benefits and creating jobs, not just for Kilmarnock and Ayrshire but also the wider Scottish communities.”

Murray McCall, Managing Partner, at Anderson Strathern said: “We’re delighted to be the first of six Gold Partners chosen to help support the entrepreneurs of the future.  I’m particularly proud that this world class innovation centre will be based in my home town of Kilmarnock and I share Marie’s deep-rooted passion for the project.

“As a medium sized enterprise ourselves, we are fully supportive of the HALO’s ambitions and its drive to create jobs, opportunities and education in Scotland. We will bring our top class experts to the project as well as our vast experience with clients across the commercial and public sector and look forward to working with new and thriving enterprises in a working environment that is zero carbon and future-focussed.”

The HALO is set to be an ambitious, innovative and inspiring environment for entrepreneurs experimenting, creating and growing highly specialised digital and cyber businesses. It will feature an industry-leading digital, data and cyber training and learning facility within an exciting and digitally connected workspace, establishing the HALO at the forefront of the “Fourth Industrial Revolution” – the digital revolution.

A £63m urban regeneration project on a 23-acre site, the HALO Kilmarnock will be the first town centre net zero carbon energy project in Scotland, setting the standard for low carbon energy sites across the UK.

The HALO is providing only a limited number of its Gold, Silver and Bronze #ROCKME packages to supporters of the development.