OK, Removing iLoks makes no difference to loading times of either the plug (in Nuendo) or standalone.
However, the Nuendo initialising thing is not correct. I'm wrong. Sorry.
My new world record for loading a project file with an empty VE instance is 1' 16". This is in Reaper, and with the 2nd Syncrosoft dongle removed. When I put the other dongle in (Nuendo licence) it takes an extra 4 seconds. This proves to me that Nuendo does nothing to help the loading time, and the reason it is not as quick when loading a Nuendo file, is that Nuendo takes longer to load than Reaper. It also doesn't explain why the Vienna standalone takes so long (for me) and not for OSX users, or why the plug loads much quicker than the standalone on my system.
DG