A RAPIDLY-growing bio-science firm at Science City in York is braced to create up to 32 more high-tech jobs, as it prepares for a £1 million move to a sleek new laboratory in Poppleton.

York Bioanalytical Solutions (YBS), which has seen its business treble since it began at the Genesis 2 building opposite Smith & Nephew on the York Science Park at Heslington, today announced its plan to move to a new £900,000 base on Northminster Business Park in May.

The life-saving firm will continue from the 6,000 sq ft laboratories to analyse blood samples taken in human clinical trials, conducted by some of the world's leading pharmaceutical companies.

Chartered building surveyors, Lightly & Lightly, of Clifton Moor, have been liaising between the developer and builder of the new building to oversee the high-tech fit-out of what is, for the moment, just a shell at Northminster Park.

The building will eventually house more than £3 million-worth of frontier-of-knowledge Sciex mass spectrometers.

These are molecule-smashing machines which assess exactly what amount of drugs have been absorbed by, and eliminated from, patients - and calculate most effective dosages.

Jeremy Cook, managing director of YBS, said: "It was Lightly & Lightly's expertise in the bioscience sector, following their work with the University of York, P&O and others on the Science Park, which made them first-choice partners when we decided to implement our expansion plan."

YBS which began with six people now has a team of 18 but this, he said, could now increase to 50 science-based and admin jobs in the new laboratories. At least ten more new jobs will be triggered by the move of YBS as others expand to fill its vacated floor in the Science City building.

Terrington Systems, already on the upper floor of the Science City Building, will now take up most of the ground floor gap. It will be full circle for Terrington Systems, which specialises in data collection analysis in hazardous and extreme environments. It took on the tenancy of the whole building in 1997 until hoped-for contracts failed to materialise and it sub-let to YBS.

Now demand for its military, aviation and petrochemical hardware and software - it can monitor the performance and efficiency of jet fighters or even power stations - means that it will expand its 20-strong workforce by up to ten people over the next year.

Also moving into the ground floor next May will be about six people from Terrington Systems' parent company, the Yeovil-based Aerospace International, which wants an to forge new links with the University of York's computer services department. Ultimately its York operation, which supplies safety critical software to the likes of Westland helicopters and Boeing in the UK, should grow to at least ten people.

Updated: 09:40 Tuesday, January 29, 2002