North East investment: What our recipients say
We went out and spoke to two of our investees to find out how receiving funding from the North East Growth Capital Fund and the North East Venture Fund has helped their business to achieve its growth.
GAP Group
GAP Group is a market-leading North East recycling business which is scaling up its operating capacity and turnover thanks to investment from North East Fund. In 2021, it raised £250,000 from the Growth Capital Fund, which is managed by NEL Fund Manager.
The business encompasses food waste management, haulage and electrical waste recycling and its aim is to get as close as possible to ‘zero landfill’ for all its recycling operations. More than 10,000 fridges are recycled each week at its Gateshead site from retailers across the North East, North Yorkshire and Southern Ireland.
After working with regional fund management to secure the £250,000 investment via the Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme, Gap Group is now expanding its site facilities to cover more than five acres in total and to start to grow its processing of smaller domestic appliances.
The company is aiming to remove every single component for re-use as part of its growth plans and hopes to implement a pollution-free waste-to-heat system. This is set to create 20 new jobs, taking its local workforce to over 100 staff, while the management team is aiming to increase turnover from £8m to £14m.
Mark Curry, finance director at the Gap Group, said: “Taking on this extra space and capacity will enable us to accelerate our growth plans and give us the room to grow that we know we’re going to need in the coming years.
“Working with the NEL team was a smooth and straightforward experience and the introduction that James made to them proved to be a very valuable one indeed.”
With funding support from the North East Fund, GAP Group is able to develop and keep its business right here in the region.
You can read more about GAP Group here.
Melius Cyber
Melius Cyber Consultancy is a Newcastle cybersecurity business with an automated software that helps SMEs detect vulnerabilities in their IT systems.
The cyber safe platform monitors an organisation’s IT network around the clock, testing security and protecting it from the latest threats. It also aligns to Cyber Essentials, the government-backed accreditation scheme that shows businesses take cybersecurity seriously. It helps businesses to gain accreditation by showing they have monitoring in place and can meet the criteria.
In response to the pandemic and to overcome the most challenging times, Melius Cyber successfully applied for investment from North East Fund’s Venture Fund, which is managed by Mercia Asset Management. The firm received £350,000 in February 2022, which was used to hire new developers, and then £500,000 in December 2022, which will be used for further development and the product release 2.0.
Richard Brown, CEO of Melius, said: “We were going nowhere fast without it, I hoped we could sell the product while developing it and almost make it self-funding and self-developing. There’s naivety on my part not being a software specialist. The tech guys were always keen on developing the product and that comes at a cost”
The funding will enable Melius Cyber to boost its sales and marketing to expand its client base and to further develop the platform. The company, which currently employs eight staff, is planning to create five new jobs in the next six months.
