Dundyvan Industrial Estate

North Lanarkshire is one of Scotland’s primary locations for industrial property for SMEs, and one of the 13 most deprived local authority areas of Scotland which were the key target geographies for SPRUCE up until the fund’s first closing at the end of 2015.

The development was completed successfully to shell and core and has since been fitted out to meet tenants’ space requirements. At the time of entering into the transaction there were no pre-lets in place, with the co-sponsors working together through the construction phase and operational phase to secure tenants.

The project has demonstrated the alignment of the SPRUCE fund and Scottish Government strategic objectives with regard to government regeneration policy.

The project has delivered numerous benefits:

• The development and the remediation of a 1.24ha brownfield site which was identified on the Vacant and Derelict Land Register

• New fit for purpose business space for up to 16 SMEs

• An estimated 12 full time construction jobs being sustained

• An estimated 117 full time jobs being created

• Increasing access to development finance for speculative property projects and hence addressing the market failure evident in this lending market

The project was the first of any of the projects funded with the assistance of the 2007/13 European Regional Development Fund to make a capital repayment, with the funds repaid having since been recycled into further projects.

• Amber invested in this asset as it met the objectives of the SPRUCE fund.
• Amber is the Fund Manager to the Scottish Partnership for Regeneration in Urban Centres (SPRUCE) which is an Urban Development Fund (UDF) that supports regeneration and green energy projects throughout Scotland. The fund provides an innovative source of finance to eligible projects which are aligned to the Scottish Government’s regeneration and green energy strategies. Amber has been managing SPRUCE since its inception in 2011.
• SPRUCE is a recyclable regeneration and energy efficiency fund, sourced from the Scottish Government, the European Investment Bank and the private sector, and is an innovative source of finance for projects that deliver outcomes aligned to key Scottish Government policy objectives.
• SPRUCE supports a wide range of urban regeneration activity within well-defined, integrated, sustainable urban development plans. The Fund’s Investment Policy seeks projects in the following sectors: 
  • Rehabilitation of the physical environment
  • Construction of new buildings and/or renovation of existing ones and associated site specific infrastructure and servicing
  • Training and e-learning centres, including investment to increase ICT access
  • Creation of safe transport links between areas of opportunity and areas of need
  • Energy efficiency retrofit works delivering energy savings of at least 20% per annum
  • Energy production from renewable energy and low carbon technologies