Kognitiv Spark Opens U.K. Office To Boost Innovative Capacity And Sales In Europe
FREDERICTON – Kognitiv Spark has opened an office at the National Science and Innovation Campus of Sci-Tech Daresbury in the U.K. – the Fredericton company’s first location outside of Canada.
“It’s really exciting and we’re genuinely looking forward to having a footprint outside of Canada and it really helps us to reach out to a market that seems to be really ready for our solutions,” said Duncan McSporran, the company’s co-founder, COO, and VP of Aerospace and Defence. “It gives us a lot of credibility, the fact that [Sci-Tech] approved our application to be part of the team there.”
McSporran said having an office in the U.K. gives it better access to the European and Middle Eastern industrial and aerospace and defence markets.
“We’ve had a look at where there’s an appetite for adoption for augmented reality solutions, but we also choose the area because we can get anywhere within Europe and the middle east very easily from that location,” he said.
Through this office, Kognitiv Spark plans to grow sales and build a team “that will allow us to create a significant sales profile in the U.K. and in Europe,” he said. The company plans to hire locally, aiming for four-to-five people in the next year and half.
The location of Sci-Tech Daresbury is also convenient. It’s in the Liverpool City Region between Runcorn, Warrington, Manchester and Liverpool, and just two hours from London. The area is home to approximately 140 research organizations and high-tech businesses, allowing Kognitiv Spark the opportunity to work with successful and influential global firms.
The Sci-Tech campus is also home to the U.K.-government-funded Virtual Engineering Centre (VEC). Run by the University of Liverpool, it’s a centre where industry comes to identify what technologies can be used to maximize the benefits of augmented reality. The VEC is already doing demonstrations of Kogntiv Spark’s technology to British industrial companies.
“The region that we’ve located in has got a real reputation for being very aggressive when it comes to adopting new technologies. And we’ve already started having a lot of discussions through the partners that are helping us at Daresbury, so that’s very encouraging as well.”
“Kognitiv Spark’s arrival at Sci-Tech Daresbury is another major milestone for the campus and reinforces our position as a world-leading hub for innovation and collaboration,” said John Downes, group chief executive of Langtree, the developer that co-owns the campus, and chair of the Sci-Tech Daresbury joint venture.
McSporran also hopes there can be knowledge transfer between universities in the area and New Brunswick.
Kognitiv Spark uses holographic visualization, collaboration & connectivity tools, powered by the Microsoft HoloLens, to connect subject matter experts with technicians on the ground trying to solve a problem on a work site or repair a piece of equipment.
Last August, Huddle reported that the company was hiring to fuel its growth in industrial sectors like aerospace and defence, and oil and gas.
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