IN BIZ MK June July 2021.qxp_A4 size 14/05/2021 10:18 Page 18
IN THE SPOTLIGHT: SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
ROBOT FLEET HITS MILESTONE
Andrew Curtis with the robots
“In Milton Keynes we have seen The first quarter of 2021 saw our service continue to grow in Starship Technologies celebrate popularity, with order numbers one million autonomous deliveries tripling in the town in the last year. – the first autonomous delivery It is exciting to know that with 120 company in the world to robots, Milton Keynes is reach the milestone. home to the world’s Contactless largest fleet of deliveries have ‘IN MILTON autonomous robots!” proven to be KEYNES WE In March, Starship hugely popular HAVE SEEN OUR expanded its service over the last 12 in Milton Keynes to months during SERVICE reach even more the Covid-19 CONTINUE TO neighbourhoods and pandemic, with GROW IN households across the many people POPULARITY’ town. choosing them as Andrew added: “The reliable ways to support we’ve received from protect vulnerable local communities across Milton populations and enable social Keynes over coming up to three distancing. years now continues to be Andrew Curtis, UK operations overwhelmingly positive. manager at Starship, said: “We’re very proud to have been able to “We’re looking forward to offer such a crucial service in Milton continuing to work closely with the Keynes and in the other locations Council to roll the service out to even more neighbourhoods in the around the world where Starship is months ahead.” operating during this time.
NEW POINT OF SALE DEVICE Paycard Solutions is offering a new point of sale device to provide a fast, cost effective way to do business. The Clover Flex unit accepts all major payment types, charges in an hour and lasts all day. It also offers both printed and digital receipts. The five-inch antimicrobial hi-res touchscreen is perfect for modern use and can be set up in minutes. Paycard Solutions assist businesses in finding the right card payment solutions that best suits their business, while helping to reduce their costs on their card processing fees, through transparent pricing. Their new product works on WiFi and 4G, and the Clover account lives in the cloud so businesses can track sales and trade from anywhere at any time. Email: info@paycardsolutions.co.uk
18 inbusiness JUNE/JULY 2021
Students at the SCIoT
INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY HERALDS A BRIGHT NEW DIGITAL FUTURE A new regional centre for digital training and education has opened in Bletchley. The South Central Institute of Technology (SCIoT) is a collaboration between Milton Keynes College and a consortium of global companies and important local brands like Cranfield University. The SCIoT, which is expected to welcome a thousand talented students and apprentices a year, was established when the consortium won a grant of £26m from the Government in a national competition and will be based in state-of-the-art facilities. It’s the only place in Milton Keynes offering higher technical qualifications equivalent to university at levels 4 and 5. The qualifications have substantial input from businesses ensuring the skills taught are the ones local industry desperately needs. Principal Alex Warner said: “This is a whole new
concept in education. The SCIoT is an inclusive centre for technical qualifications, higher apprenticeships and training to plug the growing gap between demand and supply for technical and digital roles, including cyber security. Students will experience our flexible Lifestyle Learning approach, in which they can choose to study in-person or online. “They’ll be taught by amazing people with up-todate experience in tech and they’ll work on real world problems supplied by our partners to prepare them for the careers of the future.” Around half of the course content is delivered by dual professionals, many of whom come from the project partners. Any businesses in the region with tech training needs can contact iot@mkcollege.ac.uk
