Image: KIC
KIC said the expansion will created 3,000 high-tech jobs by 2030 and that the campus will be worth €5bn to Ireland’s economy.
A €2.4bn investment has been announced to develop Kildare Innovation Campus (KIC) and create more high-tech jobs for Ireland.
KIC – a parkland between Leixlip and Celbridge – is already home to various companies such as Nikon Precision Europe, MGS Ireland, Mercury, Hewlett Packard Enterprises, Cully Automation and DXC Technology. These companies employ more than 1,000 people on the site.
The campus said the new expansion will create 3,000 high-tech jobs by the end of 2030 – the projected timeframe for the development project – and that 1,000 of these will be created by the end of 2025.
A report by Grant Thornton predicts that the expanded campus will be worth €5bn to the Irish economy when it is completed.
The expansion also includes the creation of an innovation hub at KIC, which will be a “dedicated landing space” for high-potential deep-tech scale-ups and foreign direct investment.
KIC said planning permission for the expansion was approved in January and that all but one of the new buildings have been pre-let to leading global blue chip tech companies. Preparation is underway to develop the new buildings and to create a new cycle and pedestrian bridge, which will link the towns of Celbridge and Leixlip over the M6 motorway.
The site said it will be Ireland’s only carbon neutral campus and that it will be committed to using indigenous power generated from renewable sources.
“KIC will be Europe’s most advanced carbon neutral technology and innovation campus and will be unique in terms of scale, services and flexibility, welcoming innovative companies looking to scale their operations in areas such as deep tech, photonics, biotech, machine learning, robotics as well as advanced manufacturing,” said KIC CEO Allan Shine.
The site was formerly a HP facility, but this site was shut down in 2018 before being acquired and turned into KIC in 2021. In 2022, MGS and Nikon both announced investments into the facility to create a total of 140 jobs.
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