UserReplay has been providing innovative software solutions for e-commerce since 2009 and is continuing its journey to growth with further support from Thames Valley Berkshire (TVB) Funding Escalator. The Theale based company provides large businesses that have a strong online sales presence, with a tool to analyse user movement throughout their websites, helping to identify the cause of abandoned baskets and subsequent lost revenues. As ecommerce continues to expand, there is an increased focus on making sure online interactions are efficient and productive. As such, the global market for Application Performance Management software is growing significantly and this rise is set to continue over the next few years. The FSE Group, which manages TVB Funding Escalator on behalf of Thames Valley Berkshire Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP), has been working with UserReplay since 2013, making equity investments from both South East Seed Fund and TVB Growth Fund. During this time the company has continued to expand, including establishing a base in the US where it is making significant sales. The FSE Group is now providing debt finance of £200,000 from TVB Expansion Loan Scheme to accelerate marketing activity, along with further technology development, to take full advantage of the market opportunity. Ruth Peters, UserReplay CEO, comments: “The support we have received from The FSE Group has been vital to the growth of our business; since the initial FSE investment we have refined and improved our product offering so it meets the needs of our clients and this latest loan will ensure we continue to do this in line with ever-evolving ecommerce market.” Ian Baker, Senior Fund Manager at The FSE Group, adds: “With client renewal rates at over 92%, UserReplay are clearly providing a competitive and sought-after product. The opportunities are significant and we are delighted to again be working with this experienced and impressive team to help them achieve their growth potential.” The Thames Valley Berkshire Funding Escalator is a £8.3m initiative funded by the Thames Valley Berkshire LEP. The escalator includes an Expansion Loan Scheme, Trade Finance Loan Scheme and a Growth Equity Fund, which provides eligible companies with loans and equity funding between £25,000 and £250,000 for activities that will deliver high-growth and employment opportunities.
A West Sussex food firm looking to gain a bigger slice of the pastry market with its award-winning pies has secured £125,000 from the Coast to Capital (C2C) Expansion Loan Scheme to scale-up production and expand into the wholesale market.
Midhurst based Mud Foods has been producing top quality pies, made from locally sourced ingredients, for almost a decade. The business has grown steadily during that time with the majority of sales coming from regular attendance at local farmers’ markets across the South East, supplemented with some wholesale trade.
Both avenues now offer expansion opportunities, as Mud owner, Christian Barrington, explains: “At the moment we produce around 5,000-6,000 Mud pies and sausage rolls each week, which allows us to attend a number of regular weekend markets and fulfil some wholesale orders. Sales have grown steadily year on year and we know there is potential to build this further but our current production facilities are at full capacity. With this latest funding we will be able to increase capacity and more actively target the wholesale market.”
The £125,000 will be used to rearrange the existing unit and install additional cooking/freezing equipment, increasing production to around 15,000 pastry items per week. This will also enable the company to diversify its offering by adding sweet pies to the Mud Foods range. Jeff Dober, Head of SME Debt Funds at The FSE Group, which manages the C2C Expansion Loan Scheme on behalf of C2C Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP), comments: “Annual UK pie and pastry sales are at almost £1billion and by using only real butter in the pastry, meat from The Goodwood Estate and vegetables from other local farms, Mud Foods has gained a loyal following and carved itself a niche at the premium end of the market. The management team has now identified a significant growth prospect and we are delighted to support them in achieving the increase in production capacity necessary to take advantage of the opportunities that lie ahead.”
The Coast to Capital Expansion Loan Scheme is part of the Coast to Capital Funding Escalator, a £5million initiative funded by Coast to Capital LEP. The escalator, which also includes a growth equity fund, provides eligible companies with loans and equity funding between £50,000 and £500,000 for activities that will deliver high-growth and employment opportunities across the Coast to Capital region.
A Cambridge based company providing leading digital services for medium and large companies is looking to continue its expansion with the latest in a series of Regional Growth Loans from Finance East.
Intergence is an independent IT business offering tailor made services to optimise and secure the complex IT infrastructures of large, often international, organisations. The company’s extensive blue-chip client base has exacting demands and Intergence helps them deliver a seamless service to their customers via solutions that are both cost and energy efficient. Finance East has been working with the Intergence team since 2011 to help ensure the business remains in a position where it can take advantage of the opportunities available.
Intergence Chief Executive, Peter Job, explains: “Large contracts and a protracted negotiation process, as well as a continuing need for investment to keep our offering relevant, means our funding needs cannot always be met by traditional lines of credit. In Finance East we have found a funder that looks ahead with us and provides support at times crucial to our overall development as a business. Whether funding marketing activity to aid expansion, recruitment costs to support delivery of a new contract, or development of a new product to keep us at the forefront of our field, Finance East has been there to finance our expansion.”
The latest loan of £80,000 from the Regional Growth Loan Scheme (RGLS) is the fifth received by Intergence and will be used to recruit new employees to meet the requirements of two major new contract wins. This is following the successful development and trial of the new ‘Stratiam’ software which converts data from all a business’s networks into a set of visual graphics that can be viewed on one screen. The product enables the user to quickly identify any issues and take necessary action to avoid potential problems, especially useful where a central IT department needs a clear view of an entire IT infrastructure across multi-sites and multi-networks.
Stuart Ager, Finance East Senior Fund Manager, comments: “Intergence is just the sort of business the RGLS is here to support; one with a compelling product, strong track record and ambitions for growth. The management team has continued to stay ahead of market changes and keep providing a service that is attractive to its customer base, as demonstrated by its high tender success rate. We look forward to continuing to support Peter and the team through the next phase of development.”
The RGLS is managed by Finance East, part of The FSE Group, on behalf of Local Enterprise Partnerships in the East of England and British Business Bank. The RGLS is available to established, incorporated businesses based within the East of England that have a minimum annual turnover of £100k, show strong growth potential and have a medium to long-term funding requirement to deliver that growth.
TOWER Cold Chain Solutions announces major new funding to support rental fleet development.
TOWER Cold Chain Solutions, the Reading, UK-based provider of temperature-controlled containers to the pharmaceutical industry, announces the completion of a £3m funding initiative designed to support the development of new stock, new sales support and new hubs. TOWER rents its range of KryoTrans (KT) containers from hubs in Europe, the US and across SE Asia and has seen rapid growth for its KTM range of modular containers, offering flexible, powerful temperature control for palletised loads.
Chris Pollard, CEO of TOWER, comments “2017 was a year of significant achievement for TOWER, on the one hand generating important new customers for the KTM and developing our global hub network, and on the other attracting strategic investment that backs the management team’s vision”. Just Arne Storvik, a long-term shareholder in TOWER who has arranged and supported the funding round, said “Those of us who have been involved in TOWER have never doubted the ultimate potential for the company, but it has been the successful introduction of the KTM that has opened up the market for TOWER and made it possible to generate the kind of financial support that will be necessary to meet and maintain support for the rapidly-growing demand”.
Tor Erland Fyksen, a significant investor in this funding round notes that “TOWER is well positioned in the temperature-controlled transportation market with thoroughly tested products and services, which are environmentally friendly, and which can be uniquely scaled and adapted to meet most specific requirements whether at the start, middle or the end of the journey, adding to our competitive offering”.
Julie Silvester, Head of Equity Funds for the FSE Group, which manages the TVB Growth Fund on behalf of Thames Valley Berkshire Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) said “We are delighted to show our continued support to Chris and the TOWER team. The company has grown significantly since our initial investment back in 2016 and it is great to see the success of the new facilities in China, Singapore and the United States. We look forward to working closely with TOWER to further assist them in achieving their full growth potential.”.
About TOWER Cold Chain Solutions: TOWER Cold Chain Solutions’ range of passive KryoTrans thermal containers provides a solution to reduce the total cost of shipping. KryoTrans containers are not only flexible but extremely robust and are based on a passive system that effectively eliminates any risk of human error once conditioned. TOWER provides a developing global infrastructure, with hubs creating a flexible service across Europe, the US and the Asia-Pacific region.
A company aiding production of green energy in the commercial environment has successfully secured a £200,000 East of England Regional Development Loan to take advantage of growth opportunities in the market.
Cambridge based Arriba Technologies has been designing and building algorithm driven heat pumps for the commercial refrigeration market since 2003. Over the last two years the company has broadened its focus to encompass wider commercial energy integration and has developed its innovative Volt-Hub: an electronic, software controlled power drive box capable of moving electricity around an internal grid more efficiently than any other system on the market.
Arriba’s integrated offering connects the energy generated by solar panels and batteries to its unique hub and converts it without the standard 20% power loss experienced with traditional systems, meaning that more renewable energy can be put to use across a range of outputs.
Steve Connolly, Arriba founder and CEO, explains: “Our technology provides lower carbon and lower cost energy that can be used in a number of ways from commercial refrigeration to electric vehicle chargers. A big area for us is the drive towards zero-carbon buildings; by linking our Volt-Hub to the internal wiring system of a building, we can deliver sustainable energy for use within that building. Examples of this can be seen at installations in Cambridge and Chelmsford where our systems use energy generated within each building to provide cooling, heating, lighting and water pumping services. Carbon savings in excess of 70% can be attained and in the event of an external power failure, the stored power could maintain these services for up to 24 hours.”
With an increasing focus on the sustainability of commercial buildings, there is significant demand for an integrated product that can bring such significant carbon reductions. The company is already operating in the NHS, office buildings, supermarket and food manufacturing sectors and has received interest from a number of major UK and overseas buyers. In view of this strong and growing pipeline, the regional development loan will assist the recruitment of key employees to convert sales and meet operational demand as well as extend market traction and support ongoing product development.
Francis Kenealy, Fund Manager at Finance East which manages the Regional Growth Loan Scheme, comments: “Steve’s technical expertise and commitment to innovation has paid off with the Volt-Hub, which was developed in response to a clear gap in the existing technology. As a producer of the only system of this kind, now commercially proven to deliver both lower energy costs and a significantly reduced carbon footprint, Arriba is on the cusp of exponential growth and we are delighted to be working with them to achieve their growth potential.”
The Regional Growth Loan Scheme (RGLS) is managed by Finance East, part of The FSE Group, on behalf of Local Enterprise Partnerships in the East of England and British Business Bank. The RGLS is available to established, incorporated businesses based within the East of England that have a minimum annual turnover of £100k, show strong growth potential and have a medium to long-term funding requirement to deliver that growth.
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.