This study is concerned with the role of research centres in realising universities‟ impact strategy. From the university management‟s perspective, this raises questions about how a university more systematically can organize and manage effective environments to stimulate both academic excellence and societal impact. The analysis draws on experiences from a centre in the area of material sciences with an explicit ambition to generate impact through engaging in research and education activities together with industry. The study aims to build knowledge on what type of impact goals these centres are targeting and what impact mechanisms that are considered important in order to achieve these goals. The results show that the centre has established mechanisms for close-knitted collaborative research, which also create an in-depth understanding among collaborators about areas of application of new materials and the diverse range of research work in the centre. This facilitates translation activities to form more fundamental research questions from industry‟s practical needs. Four areas of impact are identified: 1) tools and methods saving time, money and materials 2) skilled people 3) solutions of theoretical problems; and 4) development of absorptive capacity and science-signalling trough co-publications between industry partners and centre researchers. Conclusions about scope of impact, in the Swedish case, are presented in relation to recent university policy in UK, also discussing key themes of centres as impact creators.