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A Newbury based business has secured a £200,000 loan from the Thames Valley Berkshire (TVB) Funding Escalator to help it expand into areas that will benefit the environment.

Torftech has been producing TORBED* processors for over 25 years and is highly regarded throughout the sectors where the processors are in use. The technology was originally developed to improve processing efficiency in the manufacture of vermiculite mineral. It has subsequently been applied across a broad range of industries, where the precision and control offered by the technology offer significant benefits.

The greatest concentration has been in food processing, including snack food applications where the TORBED equipment allows the use of less fat whilst retaining superior flavour and quality. Torftech has also been operating in the waste reprocessing and biomass sectors and it is specifically in these areas, with their potential for significant ecological impact, the company is looking to expand further. In the field of sewage, animal waste and sludge disposal, Torftech is leading the way with reactors that use energy from the waste itself to process the waste and in certain circumstances producing a biochar side product which has extensive uses in soil improvement and remediation.

In biomass the environmental effect can be even greater, as finance director, Andrew Bride, explains: “In addition to production of biochar from biomass, a key focus for us is rice-husk fuelled power generation. Our processors have proven technological capabilities that can offer significantly reduced carbon emissions over coal-fired generation. An assessment by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change forecasts emissions savings of over 50,000 tonnes per year from one plant. To put this into context, it is estimated that the average UK household’s carbon footprint is around eight tonnes. If we were to realise our current pipeline alone, we could reduce CO2 emissions by millions of tonnes per year.”

The green impact of the technology extends further with its elimination of the production of crystalline silica rice husk ash, which is highly carcinogenic – the only technology on the market with this capability. Combining this environmental superiority with enhanced functionality, compact design and long life span (one processor has been in continuous use since installation in 1989), Torftech is well-established to take advantage of the increasing opportunities it faces, particularly in light of ever tightening environmental legislation. The expansion strategy focuses on a move away from bespoke solutions in favour of rolling out existing Torftech technology across key sectors where replication is appropriate. To realise this, the company is looking to grow its sales and supporting staff, increasing the team by two-thirds over the next two years. The TVB Expansion Loan will be used to enable this as well as marketing the existing TORBED products.

Cheryl Weeks, Fund Manager at The FSE Group which manages the TVB Expansion Loan Scheme on behalf of Thames Valley Berkshire Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP), says: “With a raft of proven, patented technology that can be applied across a broad spectrum of industries, Torftech now has a key opportunity to exploit its past experimental and bespoke activity for repeated applications. We are pleased to be supporting them as they realise their growth ambitions.”

The Thames Valley Berkshire Funding Escalator is a £8.3m initiative funded by Thames Valley Berkshire LEP to support job creation and economic prosperity in Berkshire. The escalator, which includes four different loan schemes and a growth equity fund, provides eligible companies – from start-up to established – with loans and equity funding between £25,000 and £250,000 for activities that will deliver high-growth and employment opportunities. *TORBED is a registered trademark of Mortimer Technology Group Ltd

ThriveMap, a software tool that measures culture fit between people and teams, is the latest company to receive investment from the Coast to Capital Growth Equity Fund. The Croydon based venture completed a £281,000 funding round which includes £80,000 of angel monies facilitated by The FSE Investor Network.

ThriveMap originated from TalentRocket a recruitment marketplace that connected top talent to culture conscious organisations. As a marketing device they created a ‘culture fit tool’ to help candidates better understand how they liked to work and which companies they would be best suited to. This tool generated such significant interest from companies looking to recruit that the decision was made to make the tool the sole focus of the business.

It’s a big market opportunity with latest studies indicating that 46% of new hires fail within 18 months, however, only 11% of these are down to people lacking the technical ability to perform in the role. Most of the time it’s down to softer skills such as culture fit. Chris Platts, CEO at ThriveMap, comments: “HR talks about ‘company culture’, but we know that each team works in a unique way.”

ThriveMap goes beyond the usual screens for culture fit by actually measuring how teams work and comparing this to a candidate’s preferred working style. ThriveMap through its unique algorithm, is able to assist employers when making crucial people decisions, which in turn massively reduces the chances of a cultural mismatch. “This investment round comes at a hugely exciting time for the company, as we look to scale up our team and focus on driving market awareness of ThriveMap.” adds Platts.

Avent Bezuidenhoudt, Senior Fund Manager at the FSE Group commented, “We are thrilled to add ThriveMap to our portfolio of companies that we have supported through the Coast to Capital Growth Equity Fund. Chris and his team saw an opportunity to advance the recruitment and staff retention process and have grabbed it with both hands. By enabling companies to accurately plot their existing workforces’ culture, they can hire new employees with the best chance of seamlessly joining the team, which saves a company time and money. We wish them all the best for the future and look forward to helping them reach their future goals.”

For more information about ThriveMap visit: www.thrivemap.io

MARsoftware Limited, the Hampshire based business which offers a medication adherence mobile platform, has successfully secured an expansion loan from the Enterprise M3 Expansion Loan Scheme. Established in 2009, MARsoftware provides bespoke software to assist pharmacies and care homes when dispensing medication, allowing greater safety when managing a patient’s medication.

Earlier this year the company released their new product, YOURmedPack. This is a small, discrete and fully-portable medpack. The pharmacy-dispensed pack contains all of a patient’s medication for a week, pre-organised into individual rounds throughout the day, based on their personal schedule. The medpack prompts users both visually and verbally to take each medication round, the pack can also alert a patients personal/community support worker in real-time if they ever forget to take their medication.

The £100,000 expansion loan will be used to scale-up the business, with the focus on a new sales and marketing division. The company will also be establishing a presence in the brand new DeskLodge facility, in the heart of the vibrant, innovative community, located in Basingstoke’s Enterprise Zone in Basing View.

David Appleby, Managing Director at MARsoftware, “Our new product YOURmedPack is an in-expensive way for pharmacies and care homes to easily monitor their patient’s medications. By enabling professionals to track when tablets are taken, and be alerted when they are not, there is peace of mind offered to patients and their loved ones. The ease this brings to the process of medication means less room for error. The secure and easy online ordering system safely cuts the time it usually takes to reorder prescriptions while the real time medication monitoring platform improves patient engagement. As well as health benefits YOURmedPack also saves money for everyone involved as there is no need for physical interaction for the pills to be given. With this funding we will look extend our market share in the UK and also look to replicate our success here by establishing ourselves overseas.”

Dr Mike Short CBE, Chairman of Enterprise M3 Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) said: “Enterprise M3 LEP area has a thriving ecosystem of entrepreneurs who keep pushing the boundaries of technology-enabled solutions and we are committed to supporting their growth ambitions. We are delighted that MARsoftware has secured our Expansion Loan and also established presence in one of our Enterprise Zone sites. This will no doubt support their aspirations to grow, continue to innovate and create more jobs.”

James Edwards, Senior Fund Manager at the FSE Group, “Through their bespoke software David and the MARsoftware team offer the only end-to-end solution for mobile medical packs. With an alarming third of people forgetting to take their medication, the MARsoftware medpacks offer a great remedy to reduce this significantly. They have an exceptional product that will not only benefit pharmacies and the care home sector but also have a huge impact on patients’ wellbeing. We are delighted to be supporting the company through their next phase of growth and are excited to be part of their ongoing journey.”

The Enterprise M3 Funding Escalator is a £5.5m initiative funded by Enterprise M3 Local Enterprise Partnership. It includes a growth equity fund and provides eligible companies with loans and equity funding of £50,000 to £200,000 for activities delivering high-growth and employment opportunities.

A Reading company developing initiatives to get the inactive more active has secured a £175,000 investment from Thames Valley Berkshire (TVB) Growth Fund. The investment is part of a £900,000 funding round to support the overall growth of the business. As levels of obesity, diabetes and depression continue to rise, promoting physical activity is becoming an ever more central part of public health strategy. Led by Dr William Bird, MBE, a committed conservationist and practising GP who has been working to combat inactivity for more than two decades, Intelligent Health increases the physical activity levels of a town or city by engaging the community in its Beat the Street award winning programmes. Beat the Street smart cards and fobs are distributed via schools, libraries, leisure centres etc., which can then be used to join in outdoor activity as part of a community-wide game, run in conjunction with local councils and other organisations. Participants score points for themselves and their teams by tapping the card against Beat Box Sensors placed on lampposts across the area. By targeting a whole community at once and encouraging team competition e.g. within schools, Intelligent Health has achieved high numbers signing up to its programmes and can demonstrate real impact in terms of increased activity levels. Dr Bird explains: “The motivation to engage in and continue with a programme like Beat the Street is greatly influenced by peer activity. In schools for example, even the least active members of the class often want to be involved if their peers are taking part, which is then carried into the home where parents, grandparents etc. are encouraged to join in. This has proved highly successful in getting the least active individuals from more deprived areas more active.” Involving harder to reach families is an important target for public health agencies and a key benefit of Beat the Street. Intelligent Health focuses on helping its customers to not only engage these groups, but also keep them active for longer. After the initial Beat the Street programme has acted as a catalyst to get people moving, Intelligent Health supports community stakeholders in transport, health, education etc. in making relevant policy and strategy decisions to maintain active communities. The latest funding round will be used to scale the team, further develop the technology and support the move into territories, initially Europe, to be followed by the US and Middle East. Simon Labahn, Fund Executive at The FSE Group which manages TVB Growth Fund on behalf of Thames Valley Berkshire Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP), comments: “We are thrilled to be part of this funding round which will accelerate the growth of Intelligent Health. The management team is highly experienced and dedicated to increasing physical activity and improving health on a mass scale. The company has good levels of repeat business and a strong pipeline within the UK, along with a number of successful programmes in Austria. They are now ready to take steps to expand this across Europe and we look forward to supporting them in this endeavour.” TVB Growth Fund is part of Thames Valley Berkshire Funding Escalator, an £8.3m initiative funded by Thames Valley Berkshire LEP to support job creation and economic prosperity in Berkshire. The escalator, which also includes four separate loan schemes, provides eligible companies – from start-up to established – with loans and equity funding between £25,000 and £250,000 for activities that will deliver high-growth and employment opportunities.

A company that has developed software to support the health and environmental benefits associated with a more active lifestyle and making positive choices around travel has secured a £120,000 loan to fund further technology development as well as additional marketing and operational activities.

Reading based BetterPoints has created a technology platform including a web portal and smartphone app to help drive behaviour change in two key areas: public health and sustainable/smart travel. Unlike many other health and fitness apps monitoring physical activity, BetterPoints offers a rich reward mix including real-world incentives, such as shopping vouchers for high street stores, to effect a shift in the behaviour of its users. Using a reward points system, BetterPoints encourages increased walking, running and cycling activity as well as car sharing and public transport use. By teaming up with public and private organisations targeting health and travel behaviour campaigns such as local authorities, NHS trusts, corporates and health insurers, BetterPoints can create tailor-made programmes with measurable results for wide-ranging goals.

Using its innovative behavioural change technology, the company has successfully delivered programmes which engage users and drive a sustainable change in activity as Dan Gipple, Betterpoints Founder and CEO, explains: “The Birmingham Parks programme, developed for Birmingham City Council, produced some fantastic results which we were able to report clearly and confidently to the client. They included a 200% increase in average activity amongst regular app users and 80% of those tracked moving from an inactive to active status, as defined by Sport England. Alongside this we provided evidence that 50% of users were from the top 30% of health and income deprivation bands. Combining the available data the client estimated that if expanded city wide, the programme would save the local authority £13 million over a ten year period.”

It is estimated that the costs incurred across Europe due to inactivity is equivalent to over 6% of all European health spending, with this figure set to rise. This could be avoidable if individuals were to participate in an average 150 minutes per week of simple, inexpensive activities such as walking or cycling. Benefits of BetterPoints programmes include lower employee absenteeism rates, reduced health insurance claims, a decrease in GP visits and a reduction in carbon emissions. The company’s next move is to integrate Machine Learning into its software architecture. This will enable an even more sophisticated offering to the client, allowing fast analysis of complex data on a very large scale. Crucially it will also enhance the personal user experience by automatically customising the offer, messaging and rewards as the system ‘learns’ from past behaviours.

The £120,000 from Thames Valley Berkshire Expansion Loan Scheme, funded by Thames Valley Berkshire Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP), will help fund this development alongside the creation of resources to support expansion.

Ian Baker, Senior Fund Manager at The FSE Group which manages the loan scheme on behalf of the LEP, says: “there is growing worldwide demand from private health care providers, corporates and insurers for digital solutions that can move service users towards improved wellbeing through self-care. BetterPoints has already demonstrated its pan-European capabilities with successful programmes in Bologna, Italy and Wroclaw, Poland and is now well-positioned to capitalise on the global opportunities as it moves behavioural change interventions away from resource-heavy engagements and qualitative measures towards a fast, scalable, customisable digital solution with the ability to deliver meaningful quantitative results.”

The Thames Valley Berkshire Funding Escalator is a £8.3m initiative funded by Thames Valley Berkshire LEP to support job creation and economic prosperity in Berkshire. The escalator, which includes four different loan schemes and a growth equity fund, provides eligible companies – from start-up to established – with loans and equity funding between £25,000 and £250,000 for activities that will deliver high-growth and employment opportunities.