Exclusive:How Singapore investment is being targeted to boost Scotland’s economy
Singapore, a tiny city-state only one and a half times the size of the Isle of Wight, is the UK’s second-largest Asian investor
The UK government has ramped up promotion of Scotland as a destination for investment from Singapore, aiming to capitalise on rising interest from the Southeast Asian city-state in the British economy.
This week the UK dispatched its High Commissioner to Singapore, Nikesh Mehta, to Edinburgh and Glasgow for a “roadshow” aimed at landing big-ticket commitments as well as encouraging Scottish startups to consider Singapore as a hub for attracting investors across Southeast Asia.
The visit was Mehta’s second to Scotland since an inaugural roadshow a year ago, part of a rolling programme of visits by 10 UK ambassadors and high commissioners launched by then-foreign secretary David Lammy.
“We explicitly wanted Scotland to be partnered with Singapore. I think there are obvious synergies between the two, but it’s helpful when you build on what’s gone previously,” Mehta said in an interview in Edinburgh, where he also met Tom Arthur, Scottish government minister for business and fair work.
Singapore, a tiny city-state only one and a half times the size of the Isle of Wight, is the UK’s second-largest Asian investor after Japan and ahead of Hong Kong, according to the Office for National Statistics, with total investment assets of £339.7 billion. A significant slice of that is accounted for by GIC and Temasek, Singapore’s two sovereign investors.
Stripping out portfolio holdings, the stock of foreign direct investment (FDI) from Singapore to the UK was £26.7bn at the end of 2024, the latest year for which figures were available — as much as a third higher than the previous year’s level.
Trade between the UK and Singapore has also shot up recently, amounting to £29bn in the four quarters to the end of the first quarter of this year - an increase of 20 per cent from the same period a year earlier.
Such growth has come in the wake of the signing in 2023 of a “strategic partnership” between the UK and Singapore, which has become one of the world’s most successful economies since independence from Britain in 1965.
Mehta’s visit to Scotland comes as one of Singapore’s largest private businesses, energy and shipping company BW Group, is understood to be mulling approval of an investment of up to £200 million by one of its European businesses in building a factory for wind turbine foundations at Ardersier Port, near Inverness.
BW Ideol, a French-based unit of BW Group and one of three shareholders in the Buchan Offshore Wind project, has an exclusivity agreement with Haventus, US owner of Ardersier, for manufacturing a new design of concrete turbine foundations at the port.
Buchan is a one-gigawatt, 67-turbine floating wind farm planned northeast of Fraserburgh, one of the leading ScotWind projects. Its other shareholders are Elicio, a Belgian developer, and Baywa, a German-Swiss developer.
This month, Highlands and Islands Enterprise approved £750,000 in Scottish government funding for BW Ideol to carry out an engineering study for the planned Ardersier facility, which could create up to 1,200 jobs and “catalyse a broader regional supply chain”, according to HIE.
Clean energy was one area of particular interest to Singapore investors, alongside AI and life sciences, Mehta said. However, awareness of opportunities in Scotland could be higher given Singapore investors’ long-standing focus on the so-called Golden Triangle in the south of England.
“There’s obvious interest from the Singaporean side, but I think awareness of where opportunities lie is better in the Singaporean system around the ‘Golden Triangle’ of Oxford Cambridge and London than it is in Scotland and Manchester and parts of Wales. So this [trip] will hopefully help to shine a light on that.”
In consultancy EY’s latest “Scotland Attractiveness Survey”, published in June, Scotland secured the most FDI projects outside London, with 108 — although this was down 20 per cent year-on-year amid a global FDI slowdown.
Existing Singapore ownership of Scottish businesses includes the Scottish CityLink coach service, held by taxi operator ComfortDelGro, which also owns the MetroLine London bus network. In Aberdeen, offshore support vessel operator Sentinel Marine is owned by Cyan Renewables, a Singapore marine and subsea services group that’s expanding in offshore wind in Asia.
GIC has since 2022 been one of two co-investors in Student Roost, the UK’s third-largest student accommodation operator, which includes Edinburgh in its portfolio.
Mehta’s roadshow, which included Manchester and Wales, also comes as more than a dozen young Scottish companies prepare to travel to Singapore next month for programmes matching them with prospective business partners.
The Glasgow Chamber of Commerce is accompanying seven businesses in advanced manufacturing, tech and energy for a three-day visit co-organised with the British Chamber of Commerce Singapore. The companies, including wind technology firm Katrick Technologies, Bead Bio Pharma and whisky business House of McCallum, will take part in a two-day programme of networking and market briefings.
That will be followed by a two-week stay in Singapore for eight Scottish startups in medtech, healthtech, biotech and life sciences, under the next edition of Techscaler, a Scottish government-funded scheme to help startups grow — including participation in the Singapore Week of Innovation and Technology, one of Asia’s largest technology conferences.
Programmes like Techscaler showed what was possible “if you’re well prepped”, Mehta said. “If you have 10 companies that come out on one of these trade missions from any part of the country and one or two land a deal as a result, that’s success. I would love to see more Scottish companies coming out to Singapore to look for investment or to secure new customers.
“Singapore also offers a market in its own right and the tech ecosystem in Singapore is incredibly welcoming. There are incentives to enable you to test your ideas in Singapore, whether that’s low rent or access to mentorship”.
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