Algae are an integral part of the UKRI green growth and blue economy, net zero carbon and environmental and ecological science initiatives and calls. In the past 20 years this has been a growing area of research, with 220 NERC awards granted to the value of £50,835,420 (Since 2018 there have been 12 awards so far worth £5m). CCAP is hosted at SAMS (www.sams.ac.uk/) who are at the leading edge of algal research: this encompasses topics from ecology (micro and macro algae biodiversity, harmful algal bloom dynamics, interaction of algae and bacteria & pathogens), biotechnological innovation for green growth (using algae to bioremediate environmental pollutants and plastics, sequester carbon) and sustainable resources such as high value compounds, materials, fuel and feed stocks to environmental and physical research capacity developing algae-colour remote sensing drones and validation of satellite data. The core remit of the expanded CCAP-ARIES facility is to complement the culture collection and  centralise research and service provision around increased cultivation capacity of algae, enhance the on-site analytical, genomic and metabolomic capability that supports algal research in the user community, and deliver advanced training to UK and international researchers (both academic and industry collaborators) to those at SAMS.