Kurraba’s $490m Push To Keep Science Breakthroughs Onshore

Australia has the universities, hospitals and research institutes to produce world-class science. But once research leaves those institutions, the space, equipment and commercial support needed to turn ideas into companies can be harder to find. Offshore markets start to look easier. Kurraba Group’s $490-million ION precinct in inner Sydney is aimed at this gap, with purpose-built labs, flexible workspace and global partners now attached. SmartLabs, International Workplace Group and Thermo Fisher Scientific have joined as inaugural partners, while Buildcorp has been appointed builder, shifting the project from big idea to buildable proposition. ▲ A rendering of ION at Waterloo, where Kurraba plans a multi-building life sciences precinct near the Sydney CBD. ION—planned for Waterloo about 3km south of Sydney’s CBD—is promoted by Kurraba as Sydney’s first dedicated, purpose-built commercial life sciences precinct. Australia already has major health and research clusters, from Adelaide BioMed City to Brisbane’s Translational Research Institute and the emerging Sydney Biomedical Accelerator. ION sits in a narrower commercial lane, aimed at companies too advanced for a university bench but not yet ready to build, fund and operate complex labs alone. Kurraba chief executive Nick Smith co-founded the business in 2022 with Richard Campbell and Steve Ryan after a career across institutional property, valuations, development and transactions. ▲ Kurraba co-founder and chief executive Nick Smith says ION is aimed at the gap between research and commercial scale. He says the missing piece wasn’t research, but the commercial infrastructure to support it, which he says to date has largely been inside universities and retrofitted commercial buildings. Covid sharpened the opening, as Australia put more focus on its ability to develop and manufacture critical health products locally. “We saw a real gap in the market that if we put the infrastructure in, we would be rewarded by tenants. And I think we’re starting to prove that up,” Smith says. Delete The Metro corridor behind the bet ION’s location was deliberate. Kurraba wanted a cluster, not a scattered portfolio, and Waterloo put the project near transport, universities, hospitals and a growing belt of science and innovation tenants. Smith says tenants are more likely to pay a premium for specialist space when it sits inside an ecosystem of research institutions, clinical partners, talent and transport. ION takes in 5351sq m across six lots at 74-108 Botany Road and 86-100 Wyndham Street, where older commercial, retail, office and light-industrial buildings sit on the Alexandria-Waterloo edge near Waterloo Metro. Kurraba won approval in September last year via the State Significant Development pathway. ▲ ION will deliver more than 27,000sq m of lab-enabled space across buildings of up to 10 levels. The approval clears demolition, remediation, two main research buildings, retail, parking, public-domain works, a through-site laneway and provision for a below-ground Proton Therapy Cancer Treatment Centre. Planning documents indicate a $219.7-million capital investment value and forecasts about 850 operational jobs. Kurraba puts the wider ION project at about $490 million. Botany Road Precinct controls help explain the site choice. Introduced around Waterloo Metro, they encourage more commercial floor space, jobs and higher-value employment uses in an older low-rise corridor. Kurraba has identified about 150 life sciences and innovation tenants across the broader South Sydney-to-Mascot belt, spanning clinical trials, AI, chip manufacturing, defence, drug discovery, food technology and agricultural technology. “We like to cluster,” Smith says. “We won’t ... be dispersed across the whole market.” ▲ A rendering of ION’s rooftop amenity, part of the precinct’s mix of lab-enabled space, flexible work areas and shared facilities. Not office spaces with lab benches Location only gets ION so far. The building still has to do work most commercial stock can’t. ION will deliver more than 27,000sq m of lab-enabled space across buildings of up to 10 levels, including flexible workspace, incubators, Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) clean rooms and links to capital, industry and academia. Gensler led the design, with HDR listed as documentation architect. “It’s really purpose-built real estate,” Smith says. “It doesn’t mean it can’t accommodate offices, but really it’s set up to accommodate GMP or clean room space.” ▲ The approved scheme includes public-domain works and a through-site laneway connecting the Botany Road and Wyndham Street blocks. Much of the cost sits in the bones of the building before a tenant arrives: ducted fume cupboards, manifold systems, higher-grade heating, ventilation and air-conditioning, plus positive and negative pressure areas. Smith says Kurraba has spent about 10 per cent more than a standard office building on those services. The payoff is long-term tenants that invest in fit-out and equipment. “They put large amounts of capex into the this building,” Smith says. “So, they become very sticky tenants.” ▲ Ground-floor retail and public spaces are planned as part of ION’s street-level offer near Waterloo Metro. Kurraba’s target market also runs wider than the usual biotech and medtech brief. “We look at life science a bit differently to other players in the market,” Smith says. “We’re not just biomed, biotech, med tech. We look at agri, we look at food tech.” The common thread isn’t the label on the tenant’s door, it’s the need for highly serviced, compliant space able to support research, testing and scale-up. Fitouts for growing science companies SmartLabs, a US-founded flexible lab operator, gives ION its plug-and-play layer. Early-stage companies would be able to use benches, shared equipment and lab support without building a full facility of their own. IWG, best known for Regus and Spaces, brings the flexible workspace model around it. ▲ ION’s interiors are planned to combine flexible workspace with lab-enabled areas for companies moving from research to scale-up. Together, they turn part of ION into a lab-as-a-service platform, rather than a building reliant only on conventional leases. Smith says the offer is deliberately practical. “It’s almost a ready to move into lab,” he says. “You’re putting your equipment on a bench.” The first step is bench-on-demand space for teams of one to five scientists, with shared facilities such as wash bays and fume cupboards. From there, companies can move into larger suites as they raise capital, move towards clinical trials or need more control over their space. “You go from bench-on-demand to an innovation suite to a progression suite, or we’re up to a corporate suite, which can take up to 100 scientists,” Smith says. ▲ A rendering of the planned laneway and ground-floor retail spaces within the precinct. The ladder gives Kurraba a way to keep companies in the precinct as they grow. They can start small, share expensive infrastructure, take more space over time and stay close to universities, hospitals, venture capital, pharmaceutical groups and contract research organisations. SmartLabs chief executive Brian Taylor says the model would give biotech and biopharma groups access to “flexible, high-quality laboratory environments” with operational support to help them scale. Smith says the leasing pipeline has begun to test Kurraba’s thesis, with about 38,000sq m of enquiry across contract research organisations, drug discovery, healthcare, universities and advanced-technology groups. Australia’s lab market is still young, and Kurraba has had to educate capital on how specialist space can work before much of it exists. “It’s really taking capital on that journey and showing that Australia is different and has the IP generation other countries don’t,” Smith says. From Waterloo to a wider platform Convincing capital won’t end at Waterloo. ION is Kurraba’s first major Sydney test, but Smith is already looking at how the model could stretch into other markets and further down the science supply chain. Melbourne is the next live prospect, with Kurraba in due diligence alongside a major life sciences organisation. Smith says Brisbane is “a little bit further away”, while other states may suit manufacturing-led projects, including contract development and manufacturing space. ▲ ION is designed as a multi-building precinct with lab-enabled floors, flexible workspace and shared amenity. The point is not to replace universities, it’s to catch companies once the research has proved enough to need a commercial setting. “Once they pass the viability stage, they should be coming into the commercial environment and being around their peers,” he says. Smith talks about the project as property, but not only as property. “I think it’s the social infrastructure side,” he says. “It really is infrastructure that Australia needed.” ION would turn an older strip near a new Metro station into a specialist employment precinct and give Kurraba its clearest proof point yet in life sciences, innovation and education real estate.

Exclusive
Vanessa Croll
Wed 20 May 26

Kurraba’s $490m Push To Keep Science Breakthroughs Onshore

Get the full story.