Finance Yorkshire passes £10m investment milestone
Finance Yorkshire has made more than 100 investments with a total value of £10million in businesses across Yorkshire, the Humber and North and North East Lincolnshire.
The landmark milestones comes just 12-months after the venture capital and loan fund made its first investments in the region.
Finance Yorkshire offers seedcorn, loan and equity linked investments, ranging from £15,000 to £2million to help small and medium businesses meet the gaps in funding they need for growth and development.
Investments have been made in a variety of sectors such as engineering, healthcare, digital and IT, manufacturing, energy and renewable.
As of June 30, the investments have created and safeguard almost 1880 jobs and generated approximately £27m in additional private sector leverage.
Finance Yorkshire’s investments include:
- West Yorkshire cosmetics company Badgequo received funding made up of a £800,000 equity investment and a £100,000 business loan to develop and grow the company predominantly in the UK as well as Europe.
Badgequo designs and manufactures a wide range of branded gift sets and private label products for major high street retailers. Following a management buy-out in June 2006, the Silsden-based company has grown from seven employees, 70 customers and a turnover of just under £5m to 24 staff, 250 customers and a turnover of £7.7m.
- SureCore Ltd, which received a Seedcorn Fund investment, is exploring technologies to improve the memory within silicon chips. It has the potential to significantly improve the amount of data that can be stored, the power that is consumed, and speed of operation of that memory.
Alex McWhirter, chief executive of Finance Yorkshire, said: "It has been an excellent first year of investing and laid the foundations for further development and growth. To provide more than £10million to small and medium-sized enterprises has really provided a boost to the regional economy, at a very difficult time for businesses.
"In the last 12 months we have had a changing political and economic climate, with the abolition of the regional development agency and on-going financial concerns right across Europe. The environment we work in continues to be fragile.
"However, we have seen a great many number of applications for investment in so many different businesses that it provides us with great optimism that this region can steer itself towards a more positive future.
"There are thousands of fantastic SMEs across Yorkshire, the Humber and North and North East Lincolnshire that have great management teams, are well run and possess interesting business plans but unfortunately lack funding from conventional sources in order to fulfil their strategic objectives. It is our intentions to support those companies to continue their growth and make a real contribution to the regional economy."
Finance Yorkshire is supported financially by the European Union. It has attracted £30million investment from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) as part of Europe’s support for the region’s economic development through the Yorkshire and Humber ERDF Programme, £15million from Yorkshire Forward’s Single Programme, and £45million match funding from the European Investment Bank.
For more information about Finance Yorkshire, please visit www.finance-yorkshire.com or ring 0845 649 0000. Alternatively, follow Finance Yorkshire on twitter @financeyorks.
Note: this news article is from Finance Yorkshire’s previous fund. Read more about Finance Yorkshire