Scotland’s Rural College (SRUC) will be relocating its poultry research unit from Ayrshire to Midlothian.

The new facility will be built on the Easter Bush Estate, which is already home to most of the College’s animal and veterinary scientists, over the next two years.

The unit provides research for government and private sectors as well as providing a focus for SRUC's avian-related nutrition, welfare and disease research.

Just like the current facility the new unit will be staffed and managed by SRUC employees; it will provide state of the art growing and production facilities, enabling poultry research across the production chain to be undertaken in commercially relevant facilities to the highest standards of welfare.

Professor Geoff Simm, Vice Principal Research at SRUC, says: “Bringing SRUC’s poultry staff together with SRUC’s animal scientists, while co-locating the poultry facilities alongside the complementary resources and expertise at the Roslin Institute and the wider Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies, will create a world leading centre for poultry research.”

The new facility will enhance SRUC’s ability to meet the needs of industry and a growing market, and will be co-funded by CIEL, one of the UK Government’s proposed Agri-tech Innovation Centres.

This funding has been key to enabling the relocation to happen. A move has been in discussion for some time due to the age and condition of the current facility.

The College will now begin a consultation with staff at the research unit to help them transition into the new arrangements.

The new Centre will be completed sometime in 2018; until then the Centre in Ayrshire will remain open.