HEMSPAN® has secured a near-£1 million investment from South of Scotland Enterprise (SOSE) as part of a broader £4 million funding round, enough to establish a new bio-based manufacturing facility in the Scottish Borders and create up to 100 jobs. For a region that has historically struggled to attract manufacturing at scale, this is a significant moment.
The company works with hemp-derived building materials, part of a fast-growing global market in bio-based construction. The appeal is straightforward: hemp-based panels and boards sequester carbon, perform well thermally, and are grown domestically, cutting supply-chain exposure in ways that conventional timber and concrete cannot match. According to the European Industrial Hemp Association, the global industrial hemp market is projected to exceed £10 billion by 2030, with construction applications among the fastest-growing segments.
SOSE's near-£1 million anchor played the classic regional enterprise role here: de-risking the deal enough to pull in the remaining private capital. That is exactly the function bodies like SOSE, Scottish Enterprise, and Highlands and Islands Enterprise exist to perform, and it works when the underlying business is credible. HEMSPAN® has been developing its manufacturing process for several years, so this is not speculative seed money; it is growth capital with a site, a production model, and a hiring plan attached.
For Edinburgh and central-belt businesses watching from the sidelines, the Scottish Borders location is worth noting. Land costs are lower, talent from local communities is available, and regional enterprise bodies are actively motivated to back firms willing to plant roots outside the central belt. The Scottish Government's National Strategy for Economic Transformation explicitly targets diversified regional growth, and investment decisions like this one are how that policy translates into actual payroll.
Construction technology is also quietly becoming one of Scotland's stronger innovation verticals. Between off-site manufacturing clusters, net-zero retrofit programmes backed by the Scottish Government's Heat in Buildings strategy, and growing demand from housing associations for sustainable materials, the pipeline for a firm like HEMSPAN® is credible. The 100 jobs figure is a ceiling, not a guarantee, but the structure of the deal suggests the business is being built to last rather than to flip.