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A helping hand
The decline of traditional, high-volume manufacturing in the UK has been a sad but largely inevitable result of increasing global competition. Countries with lower cost economies have for decades been proving they can make things cheaper than Britain can.
And as companies continue to close their manufacturing plants on home soil and outsource more and more of their large-scale manufacturing operations abroad, the task for the industry is to build on Britain’s strengths – nurturing new technology, innovative manufacturing schemes and a highly skilled workforce.
To encourage this process, and to enable smaller companies to take their place in the manufacturing marketplace, the government has introduced various grants and subsidies to help firms looking to either start up or expand their business.
The Selective Finance for Investment in England (SFIE) is one of the schemes that is managed locally by the regional development agencies on behalf of the Department of Trade and Industry. SFIE assistance is aimed at helping launch a new business, expand or modernise an existing business, introduce technological or other innovative improvements into the business process, or set up research and development facilities.
The majority of financial support is focused on high-quality, innovative and knowledge-based projects that provide skilled jobs.
This particular grant is only available in certain qualifying ‘assisted areas’ – regions that have relatively low levels of economic activity and high and persistent unemployment. Yorkshire Forward – the RDA for Yorkshire and Humber – received 126 applications for the grant in the year to March 2006. Of these applications, 96 awards were offered out to firms, to the value of £14.49m. SFIE projects were associated with £130.7m capital investment in the Yorkshire and Humber region over the year. And they were forecast to create 1,306 jobs and safeguard 1,216 more.
One business to benefit from the grant is Rainbow Professional, a Hull-based company that manufactures tree-protection products from recycled PVC. Thanks to the funding, Rainbow Professional has expanded its operations and consolidated its four premises into one larger site – increasing its building capacity by 50 per cent and paving the way for the creation of 24 jobs over the next five years.
The firm, owned by Gary Lister, collects scrap PVC and uses it to manufacture garden- and tree-protection products including tree spirals and weed mats. It also supplies aluminium landscaping products which make regular appearances at the Chelsea Flower Show.
Lister says he found out about the grant from Hull City Council, after enquiries to the Department of Trade and Industry drew a blank. “The DTI was suggesting that we would have to move from Hull because there were no grants available there,” he told Blue Skies. “But we thought some help must be available to us – we are an expanding company that is employing more people and developing new products which are good for the environment, and we are active in export markets.”
He says a tremendous amount of work was involved in applying for the grant and the whole process took a couple of months, “but it has been worth it to meet our business objectives”.
The money is made available over a period of three years. “We are monitored across a range of criteria that we have to meet in order to get the staged payments,” said Lister. “You basically have to produce what you say you are going to when you make the application. We haven’t actually received our first payment yet, but we can begin work on expanding the business knowing we have all these wonderful plans in place over the next three years.”
The most obvious benefit of the money has been accessing the capital to purchase a much bigger site for the company to operate from. “Our new site, which we have just finished moving into, will make us more efficient and economical and so far it’s all going well,” Lister says.
And knowing there will be a stream of money coming into the company means Lister can be confident about its future. “We aim to double again in size over the next two years and we now have the space to do it in,” he adds. “We’ll expand in all areas of the business – in exports, new products and markets. We’ve already identified the products that we want to move into and now we just need to develop the manufacturing processes that will enable us to do that.”
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