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ISSUE FIVE: SUMMER 2010
BOX CLEVER Making the direct delivery case from field to front door TAKE LOTS OF SUGAR The Apprentice star advised by Sir Alan to keep it simple PINK DIFFERENT Attending to weddings became boring, so a new business does lunch instead
RISING STAR IN CONTROL The proof that financial controllers should get out more
JAZ SWINGS ISSUE FIVE: SUMMER 2010: YORKSHIRE EDITION
Entrepreneur turned ambassador maintains sport creates harmony in community relations BUSINESS NEWS: COMMERCE: FASHION: INTERVIEWS: MOTORS: EVENTS
YORKSHIRE EDITION
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BUSINESS QUARTER: SUMMER 10: ISSUE FIVE As is entirely appropriate for summer, the season of growth, there is a distinctly agricultural and rural feel to this issue. That starts with Peter Richardson, the Newby Wiske farmer who is bucking the trend of falling organic sales that have been recorded elsewhere in the country. Instead, Peter and his colleagues are taking the northern section of the mighty Riverford organic vegetable box delivery system into new and as yet untapped areas. Then there’s Vicky Godliman, the overall winner of this year’s inaugural Rising Stars awards. Vicky might appear to be a financial controller, and certainly that is what she is by day, but back at home she keeps a menagerie of animals including hens, and both she and her husband Mark are keen horse riders who take part in event trials. That was, in fact, how they met. It all goes to show what a thorough exposure to the fresh air can do to your wise business thinking. But we go further too in exploring a new venture that aims to create more renewable energy in the country by making more use of the unjustly neglected weirs you will find in just about every stream and river in the north of England. They are relics of our glorious industrial past. But there’s another theme crossing here too, and that is one of women in business. Alongside Vicky, we have as our companion over the lunch table one Claire Young, the runner-up in the last but one series of The Apprentice. Aside from coming back to live in Yorkshire, Claire is fronting an organisation aimed at encouraging teenage girls to aim higher. As someone who gained a famous reputation for answering back to Sir Alan, she shows she is not afraid to aim high herself. Cathy McConaghy should know about aiming high, too. She used to run one of Yorkshire’s most successful exhibitions, but in this issue she explains why she has given all that up and is instead launching a catering business. As
you would expect from someone with an eye for flair, it’s not your average sandwich van. And it’s no less entrepreneurial either. Our final entrepreneur might be a man, but Jaz Athwal is no exception to our theme of fresh thinking, not least in the way he has led a life that has involved arriving in England at the age of four, going on to have a successful track record in – of all things – rugby league, building up a successful property business, and now acting as ambassador extraordinaire for the Asian business community. This issue we look too at Finance Yorkshire, the newly-launched organisation that has £90m to invest in Yorkshire businesses. Can it be an example of fresh thinking too? Read and find out.
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room501 Contract Publishing Ltd, 16 Pickersgill Court, Quay West Business Park, Sunderland SR5 2AQ www.room501.co.uk room501 was formed from a partnership of directors who, combined, have many years of experience in contract publishing, print, marketing, sales and advertising and distribution. We are a passionate, dedicated company that strives to help you to meet your overall business needs and requirements. All contents copyright © 2010 room501 Ltd. All rights reserved. While every effort is made to ensure accuracy, no responsibility can be accepted for inaccuracies, howsoever caused. No liability can be accepted for illustrations, photographs, artwork or advertising materials while in transmission or with the publisher or their agents. All information is correct at time of going to print, June 2010.
THE LIFE AND SOUL OF BUSINESS YORKSHIRE EDITION
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BQ Magazine is published quarterly by room501 Ltd.
BUSINESS QUARTER |SUMMER 10 21/06/2010 14:59
CONTE BUSINESS QUARTER: WINTER 11 CLEAR VIEW
38 DEEP TREATMENT
Features
Physios do it over the phone – then get down to the hands-on approach
64 LONG TERM ASSETS The care home sector at the moment could do with friends like Philip Burgan
20 ENTREPRENEUR Mark J Nelson has a clear view of the road ahead – and he’s keeping focus
26 SUCCESS STORY Manufacturing and Leeds – believe it or not, the words go naturally together
34 KITCHEN FOR MORE A streamlined operation built on continual improvement and simplicity
BUSINESS QUARTER | WINTER 11
70 AFTER THE SPLIT
20 SPECIAL REPORT
One joint venture goes but another appears, as Paul Morris discovers
74 SNAPSHOT A group of business leaders suggests Yorkshire is a tough but healthy place
81 BQ2 SPECIAL REPORT Banks aren’t lending. Yes they are. How companies can get access to finance
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81
TENTS BUSINESS LUNCH
22 COMMERCIAL PROPERTY
The landmark developments creating our industrial landscape
40 BUSINESS LUNCH
Regulars
The Apprentice star who keeps things basic – like Alan Sugar
46 WINE Paddy Sturman on South Africa’s finest
48 MOTORS Aston Martin or Porsche? Ken Brook- Chrispin answers the question
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ON THE RECORD Doing the positives in business
40 RISING STAR
52 FASHION Chris Jones on the lure of the brogue
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NEWS Who’s doing what, when, where and why, here in Yorkshire
20 AS I SEE IT Toby Luper on powerful partnerships
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68 EQUIPMENT Getting close to the super-wealthy
81 FRANK TOCK Gripping gossip from our backroom boy
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ON THE RECORD
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Some challenging business conditions remain but confidence is apparent with the likes of Asda expecting to absorb Netto in the UK and an ice-cream manufacturer taking the acquisition trail to France >> ASDA buys Netto and gets new chief Asda is to take over the UK stores belonging to Netto in a deal which the Walmart subsidiary claims will significantly boost its plan to increase the number of smaller stores it operates. The deal still has to be cleared by the Office of Fair Trading, but Asda says its expects to get approval this summer and will have completed the transformation of all Netto stores into Asda by next summer. Netto UK, which was launched in 1990 and was headquartered in Yorkshire, has in recent years been one of Yorkshire’s fastest growing businesses. But Netto managing director Claus Juel Jensen said the company was now focusing its attention elsewhere. “We have substantial opportunities for growth in Scandinavia and northern Europe and believe that the time has come to focus our efforts on the development of our business in these countries,” he said.
>> Yorkshire Forward goes for internal choice Yorkshire Forward has gone for an internal candidate to be its next chief executive following Tom Riordan’s move to Leeds City Council. Question marks were still hanging over the regional development agency about how or even if it might continue under the new government as BQ went to press. But in the meantime Thea Stein, currently executive director of economic inclusion, will take on the role, initially for 12 months. Stein said: “There is no doubt that this is a challenging time for the organisation and the region and that there are difficult decisions ahead of us. However, I am confident that, together with our local authorities, businesses and other stakeholders, we will find the most effective and efficient approach to ensure the
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Asda says that when the transformed stores are up and running they will employ twice as many staff as an equivalent Netto store would have done. The news comes just weeks after the supermarket giant appointed an internal candidate as its new president and chief executive officer, replacing Andy Bond who is stepping down to pursue alternative interests. Andy Clarke joined Asda in 1992 and had several managerial roles before leaving in 2001 to work for Matalan and Iceland. He rejoined Asda as retail director in 2005 and was made chief operating officer in 2007. Bond, who was known to be looking for other opportunities, said Clarke was “clearly the right choice from the internal and external candidates”. Bond himself will be staying on as chairman of Asda’s executive committee.
best possible economic future for Yorkshire and Humber.” Yorkshire Forward chairman Terry Hodgkinson, who is himself stepping down this year, said: “Thea is clearly the right candidate for this job, bringing invaluable experience of the unique role of a chief executive, current and detailed knowledge of this organisation and extensive work with partners across the region. This will be essential when managing what will continue to be a rapidly changing environment, both for the economy and for the organisation.”
Right choice: Andy Clarke
the 1990s, has been sold to private equity firm Charterhouse Capital Partners for an undisclosed sum. The 430-strong retail chain, which employs around 4,300 people, had been touted on the market for several months and had attracted many potential suitors. Hoyle, who has ambitions to take Huddersfield Town to a higher level, was reported to have made £350m personally from the deal. Card Factory was advised by KPMG in Leeds and Gordons. Charterhouse was advised by PricewaterhouseCoopers.
>> Card Factory sold on Card Factory, the greeting cards retailer set up out of a van by current Huddersfield Town owner Dean Hoyle in
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>> R&R gets into France R&R Ice Cream, one of Europe’s largest ice cream manufacturers which is headquartered in Northallerton, has acquired
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France’s third-largest ice cream manufacturer Rolland for an undisclosed sum. The deal, which is still being assessed by French competition authorities, will create the second-biggest ice cream group in supermarket sales in the UK, Germany and France. It will also push R&R’s turnover, which is currently around €400m, over the €500m mark. R&R chief executive James Lambert said the deal was an important stage in the company’s plans to increase it’s business on mainland Europe. “The ice cream manufacturing sector continues to consolidate,” he said. “This period within the industry will also result in further growth opportunities and I fully expect to be announcing more acquisitions soon.” He said the two companies had similar values and strengths. Family-owned Rolland was formed in 1898, has two factories in Brittany and the Poitou-Charente region, and although it does produce its own brands is particularly strong on own label products in the supermarket sector, selling to Carrerfour, Metro and Leclerc in France and Tesco in the UK. As part of the deal, Lionel Rolland will join the R&R management board with responsibility for France.
>> VP sees profits and debts down Plant hire business VP says challenging conditions in most of its markets have caused full year profits to drop by 25.2 per cent to £16m in the face of a 14.8 per cent drop in turnover to £134.2m. The Harrogate business is also cautious about its prospects in the mid-term because of likely cuts in the public sector, which in recent years has become an increasingly important market for it. However in the 12 months to the end of March 2010 it has also managed to reduce net debt by £17.5m to £48.3m, giving it a gearing ratio of 44 per cent. Chairman Jeremy Pilkington said the “robust” performance given the circumstances was a “highly satisfactory outcome.”
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ON THE RECORD
>> Findel sells music and film business Home shopping and distribution company Findel has sold off one of its subsidiaries to Endless for a nominal £1 in an effort to improve its own working capital arrangements. The Burley-in-Wharfedale-based company says the Webb Group, which is made up of two music and film mail order businesses, Choices and Webb Ivory Burton, was non-core to its activities. Selling Webb off will reduce Findel’s working capital requirements by between £15m and £20m, a figure which it claims has increased sharply as trade credit providers have upped their rates in the wake of high-profile business collapses in the sector. In 2008 – Webb Group’s last published full-year accounts – the subsidiary made a profit of £800,000, while it had gross assets of £51m and liabilities of £37m. However Findel says it is downgrading its benchmark profit for the year to the beginning of April this year by £2m as a result of the sale. It is also writing off £45m from its accounts in respect of Webb. Endless director Matthew Deering said the fund would immediately be investing in Webb to shore up the service it provides existing customers and develop some new platforms. “We are pleased to have been able to deliver this deal to Endless: Matthew Deering Findel in an extremely rapid timeframe of less than two weeks from agreeing heads of terms,” he said.
He said the reduction in debt had been accomplished “even as the downturn accelerated and while we were continuing to invest £14m in rental assets in support of specific opportunities and fleet renewal”. The impact of cuts in public sector funding would probably not be felt in the next year, he said, but the company was viewing the medium term with “a degree of caution”. It was more optimistic about its overseas sales, which were reducing its reliance on the UK market.
>>TCS ready to grow again Town Centre Securities says the commercial property market has improved so much in the past four months that it can now look seriously at growing its property portfolio and car parking business again. In an interim management statement for the first four and a half months of the year, the Leeds-based company concedes that the “tenant environment” in its shopping centres, which include the Merrion Centre in Leeds, continues to be challenging. But it says it has managed to re-let 90 per cent
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of premises affected by the relatively small number of tenants whose business has failed. It has also managed to see rents rise on a like-for-like basis by 5.3 per cent on the same time last year. And it claims Town Centre House, the office block it is headquartered in which recently went through a major refurbishment, only has 2,500 sq ft remaining to be let out of 40,000sq ft.
>> SFO drops case against Morris The Serious Fraud Office has dropped its case against former Leeds United director Simon Morris after a three-year investigation. The SFO said there was insufficient information against Morris, whose company Morris Properties was briefly one of the darlings of the buy-to-let property industry before it collapsed in the wake of a series of allegations in the media of fraud. A number of other people arrested alongside Morris during the investigation will also not face trial.
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NEWS
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With diverse reports on the positive attitude of the hospitality industry, factory expansions, increased turnover and innovation spiced up with some Tingley chutneys, business in Yorkshire is on the up >> Former kitchen porter wins through
>> Yorkshire “less positive” Companies in Yorkshire are less positive in outlook for the main indicators of business health than any other part of the UK, the latest business confidence monitor from the Institute of Chartered Accountants (ICAEW) suggests. Overall business confidence, however, is in line with the national average. According to the survey, while the region’s overall confidence has only fallen by 2.2 points this quarter bringing it into line with the UK average score of 25.5, the region has also seen the steepest falls in forecasts for growth in turnover and gross profits. The region has also seen a far greater rise in unemployment than any other English region over the last 12 months which could be contributing to the pessimistic forecasts. ICAEW regional director Chris Manners said: “Official unemployment statistics reflect firms’ assertions that the number of employees in the Yorkshire and Humber region declined by four per cent over the year to date. This is the steepest decline of any region and compares to a UK average fall of just two per cent - and the prognosis for the coming 12 months shows only an increase of headcount of around 0.7 per cent. This may be a reflection in some part on the region’s heavy reliance, certainly in Leeds, on the financial services sector, with bank and building society amalgamations reducing branches and streamlining staff. “Concerns over regulatory requirements have also risen on the business agenda this quarter with nearly half (44 per cent) reporting that the regulatory regime is a greater challenge to business performance, up from 34 per cent last quarter and 21 per cent a year ago.” Gross profits in Yorkshire & Humber are projected to grow by 3.4 per cent over the next 12 months, up from a decline of 2.2 per cent over the year to date. Sales volumes are forecast to expand by four per cent over the coming year after a contraction of 3.2 per cent over the last. Manners said: “Perhaps the overall picture regionally is one of cautious and steady revival, but with a number of caveats along the way.”
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A man who joined Weetwood Hall Hotel at the age of 14 as a kitchen porter 24 years ago and has since worked his way up to become conference manager won the Rising Star award at this year’s Leeds Hotel Association annual awards. Martin Wlodarczyk was one of five winners at the awards, which are now in their fifth year, and are designed to honour the people behind the scenes who help make the city’s hotels a £50m-a-year industry. Other winners included Martin Perry, bar manager at the Royal Armouries. He received the Bright Idea award for using his cocktail making skills to add £30,000 to the bar’s annual income. Other winners included Gordon Jackson, manager of the Thorpe Park Hotel & Spa who won the Major Contribution to Tourism award. Meanwhile, a theatre which faced almost certain closure only a few years ago but has since recovered to have the best year in its 110-year history was duly recognised at Harrogate’s Hospitality & Tourism Awards. Harrogate Theatre won the Best Achievement of the Year category at the awards, now in their second year. The Royal Baths Chinese Restaurant was named Newcomer of the Year, while Tom van Zeller from Van Zellers Restaurant was Chef of the Year and Gareth Vowles from the Banyan Bar was Bar Person of the Year. The awards are organised by Destination Harrogate.
>> Epiphany takes on more Search marketing agency Epiphany has appointed five new staff to its team. Christian Milburn joins as clients services manager, and Tom Bagnall has joined as business development manager, while Lu Jackson, Paul Martin, and Dave Sellars are,
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respectively, account manager, SEO analyst, and web developer. Robin Skidmore, Co-Founder of Epiphany Solutions, said: “We’re thrilled to say we have had an unprecedented start to 2010 and our five new members of staff are testament to that. The fact that we have been able to employ additional staff across all divisions of the company is further proof that the agency is growing strongly, in all areas of the business.”
>> Farsley reseller now aiming for £5m IT reseller Pure Data Solutions (PDS) has achieved 70 per cent growth for the second consecutive year, helping it to reach a turnover of £3.4m on its third birthday.
In the last 12 months, Farsley-based PDS has boosted staffing levels by over 50 per cent and secured £300k in new business from 139 new customers. The business, which expanded from Rawdon to three-storey premises at Farsley’s Springfield Commercial Centre in August last year, is now providing clients – who include Balfour Beatty, Swinton Insurance and JCT600 – with IT recycling, hardware installation, engineering and consultancy, and disaster recovery. Managing director Stephen O’Brien said the business is now aiming for a £5m turnover by 2011. “New and existing customers have given PDS the vote of confidence by asking us to provide more services,” he said. “We’ve responded with a Total Care Solution package which includes helpdesk support, to reflect our passion and commitment to exceptional customer care.”
feed your addiction
NEWS
>> Supplier deal boosts Maidston Solar power supplier Maidston is planning to create new jobs in the region by building a bespoke manufacturing and distribution facility after being appointed by ET Solar, one of the world’s largest solar panel manufacturers, as its UK distributor. ET Solar was one of the world’s first solar panel manufacturers, and now employs 3,000 staff and has a turnover of $250m supplying to over 50 countries. Michael Chater, managing director of Harrogate-based Maidston, said: “This is a fantastic partnership, enabling UK consumers and businesses to make >>
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NEWS
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significant cost and energy savings.” The company is hoping to build on the previous government’s clean energy Feed In Tariffs (FIT) bill, which has seen demand for solar power in the UK increase by over ten times.
>>New MP visits Acorn Acorn Stairlifts’ massively expanded factory at Steeton was the place chosen by newly elected Keighley and Ilkley MP Kris Hopkins to make his first official visit as an MP at the start of June. Since 2009, the Aire Valley’s largest private sector employer has invested more than £1m on a new production line at the factory, creating a further 80 new jobs, including CAD technicians and skilled machine operators. The new plant includes a fully automated powder coating plant. The company now employs more than 400 staff at its Steeton headquarters, with a further 60 in a distribution centre at Shipley. With a factory in Scotland, and offices in the USA, Canada, Australia and Germany, it has a total of 1,100 staff worldwide. “Acorn is a first class example of a British
>> Buyers see what Leeds offers Event buyers from right across the UK were taken around Leeds on a two-day familiarisation visit earlier this month organised by Conference Leeds. Great venues: Helping sell Yorkshire Delegates visited venues including the City Inn, across the UK – and worldwide. Queens, Met and Radisson BLU Hotels, Aspire, The Rose Bowl and the New Ellington Hotel. This was followed with an afternoon at the Bramham International Horse Trials in partnership with Welcome to Yorkshire. Later the group were hosted at Headingley Carnegie Stadium where following a full tour of the facilities they rounded off their visit enjoying a Twenty20 cricket match. Nicky Lockwood, Business Tourism Manager for Conference Leeds, said: “This is a great opportunity for Conference Leeds to showcase what great venues and facilities Leeds and the region has to offer the conference and events industry.” Laurie Scott, business development manager from VisitBritain in New York said: “I certainly found the visit informative and enjoyable and it will certainly help me to sell Leeds and Yorkshire.”
company that has thrived through increased investment, and it is based right here in Keighley and Ilkley,” said Hopkins, a former leader of Bradford Council. “It is firms like Acorn that will really help to get our local and national economy moving once
>> Cedar Court opens
Grand by name: Alex Georgiou cuts the ribbon, watched by grandfather Demetriou
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again. This was the first in a series of visits to local enterprises I intend to undertake in the weeks and months ahead, to get a real feel for what the local business community want, and to find out what I can do to assist them in Westminster.”
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The Cedar Court Grand, York’s first five-star hotel, officially opened its doors on 7 May in a ceremony which saw the hotel chain’s founder Demetriou cut the ribbon with his nineyear-old grandson Alex Georgiou, signalling the completion of a two-year, £25m redevelopment project. Mr Demetriou said: “When I first started in business 50 years ago in York it was my dream to one day open a five-star hotel, and now that dream has come true. We’re now looking forward to becoming a focal point of tourism in York and the Yorkshire region.” Andrew Coney, general manager of the 107-room hotel, said: “When we set out to create The Grand, we had history on our side. The building – which was constructed in 1906 for the North Eastern Railway Company – is one of the city’s most iconic buildings, and it is simply beautiful. “We knew immediately that The Grand Hotel should evoke the Golden Age of travel, reaching back to the opulence and luxury that people experienced on the Orient Express or Queen Mary, and recreating that – with contemporary flourishes – for 2010. Seeing the completed hotel, it’s clear that our vision has been realised.”
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>> World Cup helps schools think business Schools across Yorkshire are getting into the World Cup spirit this summer and being asked to design a football-themed sports drink. The Real Business Challenge, launched in 2005, aims to gives young people authentic experience of the business world, involving them from initial decision making through to project delivery. Schools have until 1 July 2010 to register their Year 9 classes for the challenge. Entries will be judged in October and 12 schools will be shortlisted to go through to a one-day final in November in which further business-related tasks will be set by initiative partner Coca-Cola Enterprises, whose bottling plant near Wakefield is the biggest in the world. More than 2,500 pupils from 80 schools across the region took part last year in the Challenge, which is funded by Yorkshire Forward and supported by the Young People’s Enterprise Forum (YPEF), a regionally-based not-for-profit organisation which aims to nurture and inspire enterprise among young people across Yorkshire. Jim Fox, head of public affairs at Coca-Cola Enterprises, said: “It’s not just excellent design and marketing skills that we’re looking for. Clever ideas on packaging, distribution and recycling will also be key in finding this year’s winner.” Alex McWhirter, assistant director of business at Yorkshire Forward, said: “This is our sixth year of the Real Business Challenge and its year-on-year growth, the great feedback we receive from students and their schools, and the support from our business partners like Coca-Cola is testament to the success of the project.”
>> Davidson enlarges Harrogate law firm Davidson Large has expanded north by opening an office in Teesside. The commercial law firm has taken space at Wellington House on Wynyard Business Park in Stockton. Managing partner Russell Davidson said: “We are the first Harrogate law firm to
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extend our reach northwards. There are some established law firms in the Teesside region already, but we feel that we offer a niche and personal service which many other law firms do not.”
NEWS
>> Innovation portal set up The body which advises Yorkshire Forward on its strategy on innovation has set up an online community to promote and support innovation across the region. In what it claims is a first for the UK, >>
>> Curry food supplier opens facility
Tingley and hot: Mayor of Kirklees, Julie Stewart-Turner tasting the new Luxury Mango Chutney with Paresh Tejura, operations director, Curry Cuisine An ethnic food supplier that was originally born out of a cookery school has opened a new manufacturing facility in Huddersfield as part of a drive to expand. Curry Cuisine, based in Tingley, produces handcrafted spice blends, salad dressings, pickles and chutneys. It opened the new 1,200sq ft unit in the Bretton Street Enterprise Centre in Dewsbury with support from Yorkshire Forward’s Rural Development Programme. The refurbished unit has been designed to enable the company to operate traditional, artisan cooking methods in a modern facility. The company, which only works with farmers within a 50-mile radius, supplies local Asda and Booths stores, but aims to increase volumes this year and adding more retailers. It is about to start supplying Harvey Nichols in Leeds. As part of its business growth phase, the company has re-branded its pickles and chutneys range under the new ‘Chutnee’s handmade’ name. The company has also achieved SALSA accreditation, a new supplier approval scheme designed to help small local and regional food producers supply their products to national and regional buyers. Curry Cuisine has employed one new member of staff, with plans for future recruitment as the business develops. Paresh Tejura, operations director, Curry Cuisine Ltd said: “We are keeping it in Yorkshire from sourcing fresh ingredients bought directly from local farmers to ensure true provenance to producing the products in our brand new Yorkshire facility. “The launch of the new Chutnee’s homemade range is designed to attract a new customer base, not just Indian food and curry lovers, but mainstream foodies looking for premium quality products.”
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Yorkshire Innovation, the regional Science and Industry Council, has created an online community – www.yorkshire-innovation.org. uk – where users create profiles and link to blogs, share tweets and ideas and use open and closed forums. Members will be able to share blogs, find help with an innovation problem or join groups focused on their areas of interest, all through the main site portal. Yorkshire Innovation chairman Richard Gregory said: “We believe that there are many innovative minds working across Yorkshire and to bring such creativity and talent together in one place is a powerful thing. Through Yorkshire Innovation we aim to strengthen and support innovation across the region and help businesses to gain competitive advantage.” Professor Colin Whitehouse, chair of Yorkshire Innovation’s Communications Sub-Group and deputy chief executive of the UK’s Science and Technology Facilities Council, said: “We were absolutely determined to create a site that, for the first time, catalyses a very high level of information and ideas exchange with the region’s innovation community. “We have now successfully produced a site that embraces the very best of social networking, a place where existing and aspiring new regional innovators can meet virtually, interact easily and share best practice in order to continue to drive the region’s economy forward.”
“The global co-ordination of legislation and policy to tackle climate change and long-term energy security have brought new issues to the table and made sustainability relevant to other business sectors for perhaps the first time. The introduction of the UK Carbon Reduction Commitment is a visible feature of that.”
>> Wates in on HIC >> Great Victoria gets down to business The Great Victoria Hotel in Bradford has introduced a dedicated floor of business bedrooms in response to what it claims has been extensive consultation with customers. Each bedroom on the floor has free wi-fi connection, an extension lead, and a spacious desk area. There is stationery packs provided and customers who book the rooms will also be entitled to free use of the business centre. Other amenities in the new rooms include bathrobes, a daily newspaper, water and fruit, one complimentary room service charge per day, in-room hot drinks and Yorkshire biscuits, and a free tea/coffee station on the landing from 6-8pm. Upgrade options include the hire of a chauffeur-driven car, secretarial services, a selection of aromatherapy massages and treatments and extra toiletry packages.
>> New planners at Carter Jonas
>> Deloitte launches ‘green team’
Carter Jonas has appointed two new senior planners to its planning department in Yorkshire. Stephen Courcier and Emma Cruickshank have joined the firm’s Harrogate office. Cruickshank previously worked for Spawforths in Leeds following her graduation from Newcastle University in 2006. Courcier has made his first move into the private sector, having previously worked for Selby Council and most recently Wakefield Council.
Business advisory firm Deloitte has formed a team of experts in sustainability at its Leeds office to help Yorkshire companies face their new legal responsibilities to reduce CO2 emissions. The sustainability group brings together experience from Deloitte’s consulting, tax, audit and corporate finance teams in Yorkshire. “Sustainability has always been of critical importance to the energy and infrastructure sectors and is becoming increasingly so in industrial and manufacturing sectors as well,” said Rob Seldon, sustainability partner at Deloitte’s Leeds office.
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Wates Construction has been named as the main contractor on a project to provide Harrogate International Centre (HIC) with 3300 sq m of new event space, together with a new entrance and registration foyer. Harrogate Borough Council and regional development agency, Yorkshire Forward, are jointly funding the scheme, which council leader Mike Gardner said would come in under the £13m budget thanks to the rigorous tendering process. “It is expected that some material savings will be achieved at the conclusion,” said Gardner, who is also chair of HIC’s management board. The scheme, which will also include public realm improvements, is expected to start in August 2010 and be completed in early autumn 2011. Centre director Stuart Quin said: “On completion of the contract, we will have added capacity to allow existing events to grow but also enable us to penetrate new markets and importantly create flexibility to allow us to run three or four events simultaneously on site.”
>> Work starts at Nostell Nostell Priory, the 18th century Palladian House near Wakefield, has started work on a £3.5m refurbishment by Newcastle-based construction consultant RNJ. The National Trust property is refurbishing the whole of the stable block, for which RNJ will act as quantity surveyor and CDM co-ordinator. RNJ is also involved in providing new car parking facilities, a visitor meet and greet centre and drainage works to the grounds of the estate. Work is set to complete in April 2011. John Gibson, partner at RNJ, said: “This
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revamp at Nostell Priory will result in a range of new and updated facilities for visitors to benefit from including a shop, restaurant, function rooms and toilets, together with National Trust offices and accommodation.” Home to one of the largest and most diverse collections of Chippendale furniture in the world, Nostell Priory takes its name from the former 12th century Augustinian Priory on the site. It sits within 300 acres of parkland and was bought from Lord St Oswald by the National Trust with funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund. The project team on the stable block also includes architects Rodney Melville and Partners, structural engineers SFK Consulting, services engineers Buro Happold and contractor Irwins Ltd from Leeds.
>> Cancer drug firm aims high A York-based drug development company currently engaged in developing anti-cancer drugs is seeking to attract up to £2m in extra investment through the Yorkshire Forward-funded Investing in Health programme. Pro-Cure Therapeutics Limited has also taken two new directors on to strengthen its board as it prepares to take its new drug candidates into clinical testing by 2012. The company, based in the Biocentre at York Science Park, has already secured nearly £2.8m of investment to date. This includes over £700,000 from its existing investors, led by the Yorkshire & Humber Equity Fund, and Yorkshire Cancer Research. It has also won a £100,000 Yorkshire Forward research grant which will be used to undertake preliminary screening of the next batch of targets in prostate cancer. But it feels participation in the programme, which is managed by Grant Thornton, will help to widen Pro-Cure’s network of healthcare investors and will generate new funding opportunities for the company. Chief executive Mick McLean said: “We are seeking this investment to take our work to a significant milestone of showing early
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efficacy. We’ll then be able to attract more substantial investment to establish a pipeline of therapeutic candidates, take them through pre-clinical development and to validate additional targets in prostate and other cancers.” Prostate cancer is the second most common cause of cancer deaths in men worldwide. The prostate cancer drug market is estimated to be US$5.2bn worldwide, rising to US$7bn by 2015. At the same time David Livesley and Dr David Milroy have joined the company as directors. Livesley represents YFM Venture Finance Limited which led the last round of funding. Milroy is a fund manager with Maven Capital Partners and represents White Rose Technology Seedcorn Fund, one of the company’s founder shareholders which also participated in the last funding round. The Investing in Health programme forms part of Yorkshire Forward’s ongoing strategy to support the development of the healthcare technologies industry in Yorkshire and Humber.
NEWS
The MRL Eye is a micro-UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) with full CCTV capabilities which can be used to survey inaccessible or dangerous locations, overhead power lines or pipeline inspections and traffic management. Such vehicles are designed to be used by the military and several police forces in the UK for surveillance or searching in dangerous or difficult terrain. But the Civil Aviation Authority has decided a pilot’s licence is needed to operate such mini aircraft, and now MRL, an international safety management company based in Knottingley, is the first organisation in the country to be granted such a licence. MRL Eye provides constant airborne imaging or data transmission while hovering and flying. It has an autonomous self-positioning and self-stabilising flight management processor that allows operators to use the unit safely and effectively. Its vertical take-off and landing capabilities mean it can be used virtually anywhere, and in particular for scenarios where the cost of helicopter hire is prohibitive John King, MRL Eye project manager, said: “Helicopter filming is the only other alternative, but helicopters are noisy, bulky and not always environmentally sustainable. Also, they cannot be used inside large structures and helicopter hire is expensive, which is becoming more of a factor for clients.” MRL director Phil Storr said the new licence, which has taken 12 months to gain was part of a significant investment by the company. “We see a revolutionary new way of addressing surveys at height that require difficult and dangerous access,” he said.
>> Harratts up to 12
>> Eye over Yorkshire A West Yorkshire company has become the first organisation in the UK to be granted a licence to operate a German-made, eye-in-thesky flying unit.
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Family-owned motor retail group Harratts has opened a new dealership in Leeds, bringing the total number of its branches in the region to 12. The company has opened a new Peugeot dealership on Scott Hall Road. It has also taken over the territory of Robins & Day Horsforth and Evans Halshaw Central Leeds. The new opening comes just six months after it opened a new dealership in Wakefield.
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NEWS
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both a significant demand for our current services and a real impetus for us to carry on developing new technology. “As one of the leading computer science departments in the UK, we feel University of York undergraduates can really help us in both of these areas and, as a business with its headquarters in Yorkshire, it’s great to be able to develop and nurture young talent.” The company is also looking to increase its headcount significantly over the next year, with new developers and sales people. Grogan said: “Historically, it’s been tough to find people with the right skill set so it makes sense to tap into the talent at local universities and prove there are great opportunities available in Yorkshire.”
Accelerating: Georgina Slack
>> Contis takes on FD Prepaid card provider Contis Group has appointed Andi Lonnen, formerly group financial controller of the Private Health Partnership (PH), as its new finance director. During her time at Baildon-based PHP, Lonnen played a key role in doubling its turnover over a seven-year period and in PHP purchasing two companies. She said: “I was seeking to add value to a business with dynamic and ambitious targets and was impressed by the speed at which Contis is becoming a trailblazer in the prepaid financial services provision sector – and a major force to be reckoned with.” Contis managing director Mike Fromant said: “Andi will be a great asset as we continue to innovate and expand organically and by acquisition. The prepaid sector is forecast to continue growing until at least 2017, with the UK expected to clinch a 25% share of the European market. “Andi will play a substantial role in helping us to cement our position as the only true end-to-end service provider in the prepaid card industry.”
>> Oakapple not bowed by tariff reduction A Leeds-based renewable energy company says it is determined to forge ahead with its planned £100m investment in the sector,
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>> Car fanatic wins dream apprenticeship An 18-year-old currently working for JCT600 Ferrari in Leeds has become one of just 11 apprentices across the UK to be chosen by Ferrari to enrol on its prestigious three-year apprenticeship programme. Georgina Slack has been interested in mechanics since she was a child and recently completed a two-year automotive course. She will train with JCT600 Ferrari at its Brooklands dealership and, along with the other 10 successful candidates, will go through 24 weeks of dedicated training at Ferrari North Europe’s new apprentice facilities in London where she will be taught skills in science, engineering and technology. “To have been chosen from more than 1,000 school-leavers is an exceptional achievement and one that Georgina richly deserves,” said Craig Walton, service manager at JCT600 Ferrari. “It was a rigorous selection process with aptitude tests, interviews and a two-day work placement, but Georgina’s potential and enthusiasm stood out.” Georgina Slack said: “For me, like many other young people, the opportunity to join one of the world’s most prestigious sports car brands is a dream come true.”
despite the Government’s halving of feed-in tariff (FIT) payments for solar installations. Although the cuts will adversely affect returns, Oakapple Renewable Energy says it remains confident that solar PV installations still represent a viable long-term commercial investment. It even believes the reduction in the tariff could actually prove to be a benefit to the industry in the long term as it causes fewer professional operators to exit the industry, leading to higher quality installations. Oakapple also believes that the free solar
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panel model and roof leasing arrangements it is introducing will become even more attractive for commercial and domestic property owners. With a significantly lower return on their investments, many potential customers may now decide not to incur the financial outlay required to invest fully in the systems themselves. Oakapple managing director Philip Taylor said the FIT reduction is great news for those opting for free solar panels. “It is of paramount importance to those fitting free solar panels to ensure the system performs at
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ENTREPRENEUR
BUSINESS QUARTER |SUMMER 10 21/06/2010 15:00
ENTREPRENEUR On the surface, Jaz Athwal’s story would appear to be about an Asian businessman doing well for himself in the UK. It’s about someone who came over here with his mother at the age of four to attend his father’s funeral, stayed with her in Bradford and only being joined by his elder siblings later, gradually built up a chain of convenience stores with the family that came under the Spar franchise, and after dividing these up among the family in the early 1990s went into property where he made a comfortable, but not excessive fortune. Enough to be retired at the age of 48. Nothing particularly special about that then, and it will be no surprise to hear that he has now also taken on a role as a special ambassador of Bradford Chamber of Commerce to the Asian business community. “It was a position that (chief executive) Sandy Needham created,” he says. “They wanted to spread the message of the chamber within the Asian community. Not a lot of Asian businesses knew what the chamber was. I had access to the senior guys, whereas someone from the chamber would first make an appointment with marketing and work their way up. I would go straight to the person at the top. When that filters down from the top a lot more gets done.” Like many successful business people, Athwal also has a strong interest in sport, particularly,
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It was very unusual for someone like me to get into Rugby League. I eventually went up to Bradford Northern. People all around the town knew Jaz was coming to play a match at the moment, golf. He was the first Asian captain of a UK golf club, and has launched an organisation that aims to introduce golf to inner city kids. Princess Anne is endorsing it by making a royal visit to the academy in July. But this story starts to depart quite sharply from normality when you discover that sport is not something Jaz has lately discovered. It is something that he has been passionate about all his life, and that he really believes has helped break down barriers like nothing else. And he should know. The sport that he excelled at in his youth was rugby league, hardly the kind of sport that has traditionally been welcoming to players from the Indian subcontinent. Particularly when you consider that at the time he was playing it was in the depths of the dark 1970s, replete with National Front marches and the like. Surprisingly, Athwal can still laugh about this. “Yes, it was very unusual for someone like me to get into Rugby League,” he says. “I was as
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rare as Shergar. Lord Lucan could have been found more easily. I eventually went up to Bradford Northern to the academy team. We had some great players like Ellery Hanley and Brian Noble who went on to become legends. Henderson Gill too. “But,” he chuckles, “I used to have a bigger following than they did ever. People all around the town knew Jaz was coming to play a match. They were mainly from the National Front, of course, but I used to think they were fans of mine.” What’s astonishing is that he is only being partly tongue in cheek through all of this. He was well used to being called “Paki” or “wog”, he says. He remembers Huddersfield in particular as being a place where he felt intimidated. But he just took it in his stride. “I was even doing a bit of work as an MC at the time,” he says, “and I would use some of this as a joke. I knew my white English team mates would stick up for me. I had people like my friend Kevin who was soon around to sort anyone out if they came near me. “You were in for a lot of stick anyway as scrum half, but after two years the abuse had no effect. I remember playing in Keighley once. I was smacked right across the pitch, and they looked down and said: ‘How do you like that, you Paki?’ And I said: ‘I am an Indian actually,’ and got up and carried on playing. It took two or three years to earn your stripes in the 1970s.” Nor does he necessarily think that such abuse has ended, as a recent experience this St George’s Day only made only too clear to him. “I was coming back from a night out through Shipley,” he says, “and I noticed that one of the shops I know was still open at half ten. I popped in to make sure everything was OK, which it was. My car was 50 yards away, and when I came out there were about six or seven
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16 to 17-year olds sitting on it drinking cider. They were a mixture of girls and lads. I had to run the gauntlet of: ‘You effing wog, you Paki this, you shouldn’t be in this country, you have taken all our jobs’. And this is 2010. Of course it shocks me and it saddens me.” Nevertheless Athwal absolutely refuses to let himself get down by remarks from people who, he is keen to point out, are from his community. He drinks pints like the best of them. In fact, although he is a Sikh, and religion clearly plays a very important part in his life, his penchant for a pint is one thing that has stopped him wearing a turban. He just couldn’t be that devout, he says. “I am a little fat Yorkshireman and I am happy to be that,” he says. “It has served me well for 48 years.” It was his interest in sport that first got him to realise how such seeming adversaries were all part of the same community, and the hope that sport can continue to bring forward such a message is one of the reasons why he remains so committed to it. “When I was at Priestlands Middle School in Bradford I noticed there were pockets of white and Asian lads in the playground,” he says. “It was segregation without us knowing what that was. And then one day the teacher said: ‘We have a match on this Saturday and you are playing.’ I protested, but he insisted. Well, I played on that Saturday morning in goal and we won. Come the Monday morning we were still in our little groups, but the guys from the white English group came to say: ‘Are you playing on Wednesday?’ I noticed then that all I had done was play football, and they had noticed me. Yet I had already been at the school four years. I was a link from one to the other.” And how. The friend Kevin he mentioned before, the one who would protect him if anything got too abusive, first came to introduce himself on the football field. As he shook the boy’s hand, Athwal says he couldn’t help noticing the swastika and National Front symbol tattooed on his forearm. “He just said: ‘You’re Jaz aren’t you? You’re coming over to play for our team.’ And I thought it was fantastic. Sport became a perfect opportunity.” It is because of this mindset that he has >>
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ENTREPRENEUR
Deep thinker: Jaz Athwal has the ability to see all sides of the cultural divide.
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ENTREPRENEUR
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little time for anyone, whether from the Asian community or one of its white supposed supporters, who tries to take Britain down. Yes, you need to acknowledge the huge contribution Asian immigrants have made to Britain, particularly the business community, but there has to be some balance. “I’m really at home in Yorkshire,” he says. “This is Great Britain, not rubbish Britain, and sometimes GB should tell people that when they come here that there are some rules they need to adhere to. If you are happy with them fine, if not make other arrangements. This country has given us a voice, so if we want to talk about injustice we should talk about injustices back home. We can talk about the slavery, the caste system, and all the things that are wrong back home. This country, by contrast, has been fantastic.” He thinks some of the powers-that-be have become far too anxious about being politically correct in their dealings with the Asian community. True, he says, there are business advantages to be had in being aware of cultural differences. He always admires the professional services companies he sometimes arranges business conferences with who have gone out of their way, for example, to provide halal meat in the buffet. Those little things could often tip the balance in a “beauty parade” of firms vying for a contract, he says. Similarly he sees new ways of working out ticketing in a recent Pakistan vs Australia cricket match he observed. “The corporate tickets were not selling at £450 a head,” he says, “but the bulk of that cost is alcohol-led. Why would someone who doesn’t drink alcohol want to pay that? They know there will be some idiot like me who will drink them out of house and home, but there is also a guy who might just want to come and watch, and he needs to be catered for.” But in other areas, he says, liberal Britain has just been too willing to bend over and allow anything. “I would say 99.9% of migrants in this country are hard-working honest people who couldn’t give a toss about these issues,” he says, “but there are too many do-gooders in this world. If I tell an Indian joke, I would expect everyone to laugh even if it’s a mixed audience, but they won’t because they think it might not be
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ENTREPRENEUR
politically correct. If we want inclusivity, no-one wants to be pigeon-holed.” Being a Sikh, Athwal feels he can’t comment on the controversial issue of burqa wearing, and both he and I are less sure on the issue of whether a Sikh man with a turban is allowed to ride a motorbike without a helmet. I later discover that in fact he can, but again Athwal thinks this is an issue that is overheated. “All the safety campaigners are saying is that the helmet would be a better option for you,” he says. “They are not saying: ‘We don’t like you being a Sikh’.” It is this ability to see both sides and to help integrate which has no doubt helped Athwal in his property career. In the 1990s he was one of the first people to win funds from a programme called Living Over The Shop (LOTS) which aimed to re-used the abandoned upper storeys of shops as living spaces. “We got a £20,000 grant for a seven-unit scheme in Ecclesall,” he says, “and the whole project only cost £40,000.” But he made a real killing from converting former working men’s clubs into residential apartments. “Working men’s clubs are often fantastic buildings,” he says. “They have high ceilings and plenty of room for development. But at the time many were struggling, and would have closed anyway.” Athwal insists that his working class background put him in good stead for negotiating with such clubs, but I am also sure his skills at inter-racial diplomacy, honed on the sports field, must have helped smooth the frowns of the solidly white club committees who might have thought that this foreign
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gentleman was coming to take their community away. “I wasn’t doing them out of their club,” he says. “It was just a fact that as a sign of the times they were no longer there. Whereas in the 1960s and early 1970s they were where people congregated because it was cheaper and there was a concert hall, those things were changing. Lifestyles were changing. I could have a look in and think: ‘I can make 18 flats out of this,’ which I would.” Now he has a similar modus operandi with his golf academy. He says: “I still turn up at golf clubs, and I see people thinking: ‘Nobody has ordered a taxi or a takeaway, so what is this guy doing? That is a barrier that needs to be broken. But at the same time kids still have the idea that this is a middle-class game, and yet the trainers they have on would probably pay for a full year’s junior membership. “Golf gives you exercise, but it also teaches you social skills, etiquette, manners. It teaches discipline. Young people need that.” At 48, he still has many years ahead to ensure they get it. n
Lee & Priestley’s specialist Entrepreneur Team works with clients as a strategic partner, offering a unique blend of legal, business and entrepreneurial expertise. Lee & Priestley acts for businesses across a broad range of industries and has a particular reputation for entrepreneurial expertise in the new media, media, internet, technology, creative, leisure, entertainment and healthcare sectors.
Jonathan Oxley, Senior Partner, Lee & Priestley LLP Tel: 0845 129 2300 10-12 East Parade, Leeds, LS1 2AJ www.leepriestley.com
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AS I SEE IT
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TOGETHER WE’RE STRONGER The seismic shift in British politics that has seen the dawn of a pragmatic new liaison between the Tories and Lib Dems could hold some valuable lessons for business survival. Toby Luper explains why powerful partnerships could hold the key to success in turbulent times
Thea Stein will have a perilous path to tread as she heads up the newly slimmed-down Yorkshire Forward if she is to ensure that it helps to forge a dynamic future for the region’s hard-pressed business community. The real partnership and meaningful communication between the organisation and the businesses it exists to support will need to be stronger and more willing than ever as it embarks on unchartered waters with its budgets slashed by up to £44m. Stein is an academic and health professional by background, but the fact that she will be complemented by a chairman who’s background is firmly in the commercial world – a toss up between banker Chris Pilling and manufacturer Barry Dodd at the time of writing – bodes well for an organisation that absolutely must expound successful partnership. These are unprecedented and extraordinary times. When the Liberal Democrats find themselves flung into the arms of the Conservative Party in a coalition which the country as a whole is relying on to provide the leadership to steer us out of the nightmares of
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recession and back to prosperity, the concept of powerful partnerships has never been higher up the agenda. For business, the whole question of partnership is especially pertinent in the face of persistent gloom from forecasters. In June, insolvency group Begbies Traynor warned companies to batten down the hatches with the morbid prediction that we are set to endure the miseries of a double dip recession. A second wave of ailing businesses needs to founder, says Begbies’ executive chairman Ric Traynor before the recovery can properly take root. Struggling companies that have survived the recession but are being propped up by government support and record low interest rates must therefore be sacrificed, so Traynor’s theory goes, in a purge that will be the catalyst for new growth and recovery. As a business owner, these observations and dire warnings are especially significant. Perhaps we can more successfully weather the stormy economic conditions if we look to the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition, which is drawing strength from co-operation between what many have previously
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considered the unlikeliest of bedfellows. The late business management guru Peter Drucker said “alliances are where the real growth is” – a truism as valid today as it was in the last century. The phrase might well be music to the ears of David Cameron and Nick Clegg, but for the coalition to prosper beyond the honeymoon period it is currently enjoying, it will need to rely on its most positive qualities, many of which are also being used to propel some of the most successful business partnerships. To his credit, David Cameron has pledged that the way forward for national Government must be marked by transparency and accountability, attributes which become more of a reality when partners with differing agendas are involved. If the coalition can live up to its promises, it will be strengthened by the robust relationships that partnership will force upon it and that are also a bedrock of the most successful business alliances. When companies work in synergy together – whether in a formal partnership or in strategic alliances – one of the most powerful factors is that
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each side must share a clarity of purpose. Once this is established, all sorts of creative and innovative magic becomes liberated and the new entity gathers and drives its own autonomous momentum. The successful partnerships are those that harness the power of their robust alliances to bolster themselves against uncertainty and fragility. When partners bring skills to the table that complement one another they become stronger, more flexible and often more responsive to their customers’ needs, all of
which leads to a more resilient and ultimately more successful organisation. One of the biggest hurdles to overcome when people and organisations are in the process of joining together to form a partnership is a lack of trust. For the Tory-Lib Dem coalition that undoubtedly involved a gigantic leap of faith after endless rounds of secretive exchanges and discussions. Whether there can ever be total trust between politicians of different hues is debatable, but in a business partnership, trust is usually built up over a period of time,
David Cameron has pledged that the way forward for national Government must be marked by transparency and accountability, attributes which become more of a reality when partners with differing agendas are involved
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AS I SEE IT
during which both, or all, sides can weigh up the other. But with trust, a common purpose and complementary skill-sets on board you create something new and exciting that can help you step bravely into the future - and keep looking forward in your dynamic working partnership. Modern alliances, whether in government, between the public and private sector – as in Yorkshire Forward’s case – or in business, are increasingly the golden means of building, not simply a bigger organisation, but a more progressive, stronger and adaptable one. When David Cameron officially announced the coalition he described it as “a new progressive partnership”. I applaud his optimism and urge the public and private sector to follow suit and forge sustainable, transparent and accountable partnerships that will enhance the region’s economy and achieve ambitions that may otherwise be unattainable.n Toby Luper is owner of Hemingway tailors, based in Leeds. He is also a partner, with Alex Vince, in lifestyle management company, The Hemingway Club.
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COMMERCIAL PROPERTY
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A sea of tranquility is planned for Leeds – where the office market continues it momentum – while there’s a significant award for Bingley and praise for Southgate’s teamwork in Bradford >> Courtyard gets first tenant Keyland Developments’s The Courtyard development at Midpoint in Leeds has its first occupier. Redress Claims has taken a new lease on 2,800sq ft in a deal arranged by DTZ, joint agents on the site with Carter Towler. Naman Hussain, operations director at Redress Claims, said: “Our expanding business has outgrown its previous accommodation. The Courtyard provides us with our own self-contained modern premises with plenty of local amenities for our employees. While remaining close to our Bradford roots, our new location will allow us to expand into the Leeds region.” Phillip Dawson, associate director at DTZ said: “It is encouraging to see another out-of-town office letting complete in what has been a tough period in this challenging market.
>> Switch2 for Shipley Switch2 has taken out a 10-year lease on a ground floor unit at GMI Development’s Waterfront site in Salts Mill Road in Shipley. The energy company has taken nearly 7,000 sq ft in the former Filtronic offices in a deal negotiated by DTZ and BNP Paribas Real Estate. The company supplies bespoke metering and billing technologies and services for multitenancy buildings. Chris Fortes, Switch2 Energy Solutions’ finance director, said: “Switch2 is a locally based company which is expanding its operations. This has led to the need to relocate to more suitable premises, with a much larger catchment area to recruit from. By moving to modern open plan offices, it significantly enhances our working environment and will act as a catalyst to change our working practices for the better.” James Poskitt, development director at GMI Development, said: “The refurbishment of The
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“The Courtyard comprises five separate units and with Redress Claims’ occupation together with another building currently under offer, we will soon see 35 per cent of the space occupied.” Keyland’s development director James Smithies said: “The recent activity at Midpoint together
Waterfront has provided Shipley and Bradford occupiers with Grade A office accommodation in a tranquil setting. Our success at The Waterfront is testament to the quality of product and the excellent train links with Leeds and Bradford.” Phillip Dawson, associate director at DTZ said: “Combined with the recent lettings to Advisor Plus and Red Embedded, nearly 70 per cent of the building has now been let. The Aire Valley has proved very popular in recent times and provides the occupier with a first rate train service to Leeds and Bradford together with excellent levels of car parking. The majority of out-of-town offices in the region simply cannot provide this.
>>Warehouse wins again The Navigation Warehouse redevelopment on CTP St James’s Waterfront Wakefield site has won two more awards. The Grade II* listed warehouse conversion has won awards in both the Royal Institute of Chartered
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with the opening of the Aagrah banqueting centre sees completion of the Midpoint scheme. Despite the difficult economic climate, it is encouraging to see that occupiers are returning to the market. This is just one example of how we are seeing a shift in the market.”
Surveyors Pro-Yorkshire Awards and the Royal Institute of British Architects Awards. CTP St James director David Topham said: “We are absolutely delighted that the wonderful Navigation Warehouse has been honoured, not once, but twice, in major awards ceremonies. This is one of the finest conversion and restoration projects we have ever completed. With its setting and character, it makes a superb office environment, whilst the restaurants on the ground floor add unique character to the waterfront development.” The building was refurbished by WM Anelay Limited of York and the restoration and adaptive use was designed by Building Design Partnership from Manchester. The building has already won a Best Project of National Significance in Wakefield Civic Society’s Design awards, a Best Re-Use of a Georgian Building award from the Georgian Group, and a commendation in the National Civic Trust awards Wakefield Waterfront includes 15,000sq ft of office space and two restaurant opportunities.
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COMMERCIAL PROPERTY
>> Signs of growth in the office market The Leeds office market has remained surprisingly buoyant through the past few months, many of the city’s agents are reporting, with headline rents remaining as high as between £25 and £27 per sq ft for Grade A space in a prime location. But a higher-than-average demand from the public sector is thought to be the main reason for momentum being maintained. Some agents also claim that a lack of new Grade A speculative building has created an opportunity for those wanting to refurbish Grade B stock. Guy Cooke, a partner with consultancy Knight Frank, says the Leeds city centre market ended relatively well in 2009, with 162,000sq ft transacted in the last quarter. That took the year to total to 400,000 sq ft, against a ten-year average of 550,000sq ft.
“That was not a bad result in a market underpinned by many small deals in the absence of corporate movers,” he says. “Highlights were Yorkshire Water taking 57,000sq ft at Clarence Dock, the largest letting in over two years, and Zolfo Cooper’s earlier letting of 7,000sq ft at Highcross’ Toronto Square, equalling the record headline rental of £27.00 per sq ft. “The number and quality of enquiries has steadily picked up during the past six months and rentals on the best space are holding up, with Grade A being quoted at £21 to £26 per sq ft >>
Holding up: Guy Cooke reports a pick-up in enquiries
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COMMERCIAL PROPERTY and Grade B between £16 and £21 per sq ft. “The vacancy rate in Leeds has jumped to 12 per cent, following subdued demand and rising stock levels from downsizing companies. But other regional cities like Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham, Cardiff and Edinburgh have higher vacancies and consequently their net effective rents after incentives have fallen further.” Research by DTZ, meanwhile, suggests that headline rents of between £27 and £28 per sq ft are still being quoted for the very best space, although prime headline rents are more usually likely to have remained stable at £25 per sq ft in the first quarter. The agency says take-up fell back in the first quarter, but remained relatively healthy at around 85,000sq ft, made up of a larger number of smaller deals than occurred in the previous quarter. Both agencies expected rents to remain under pressure in the months going ahead, although there were mixed views on how much this would be down to “landlord conditioning”, where cautious occupiers hold out for more favourable terms. Guy Cooke said: “We expect a gradual improvement in tenant demand as sentiment improves, although the pressure on Leeds rents will remain until the current supply is reduced. This presents an opportunity to improve your offices within a budget.” However DTZ’s associate director Eamon Fox said the effect of landlord conditioning would dilute. “Undoubtedly rents have come under pressure,” he said, “We are seeing occupiers continue to chase value, location and quality. But it is refreshing to see the mentality of
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landlord conditioning dilute itself. More occupiers are moving due to their desire, as opposed to necessity, and it’s fair to say that in general requirements are more credible.” Cooke saw some positive signs ahead of some occupiers who have been out of the market for some time re-considering options. “There are some encouraging pockets of activity within sectors such as education, digital and media, training and recruitment and middle-tier professional service companies,” he said. “They are upgrading their accommodation and securing exceptional deals.” But both Knight Frank and DTZ see the public sector remaining a significant player in the months going ahead. Cooke claimed the public sector had been responsible for seven out of ten of the largest regional lettings in 2009. “Current requirements from Leeds City Council which is looking to consolidate 90,000120,000sq ft under one roof and the NHS seeking 30,000sq ft may give a further boost to the market,” he said. DTZ’s research has also shown that, unlike most other regional markets, the public sector has many large requirements in Leeds. There were also mixed views on whether the likely cuts in public spending would jeopardise the new signs of growth. Cooke said he thought the professional community “needs to sustain a comeback to bolster demand”. But Guy Gilfillan, head of Lambert Smith Hampton in Yorkshire, believes nationwide cuts in public spending could even provide an opportunity to the region, as public sector organisations and quangos might seek to reduce costs by relocating out of the more
The pressure on Leeds rents will remain until the current supply is reduced. This presents an opprtunity to improve your offices within a budget
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expensive South East. He said: “With around 644 public sector leases due to expire or reach a break clause in the current financial year – a high proportion of which are located in Central London – and a further 15,000 civil service positions identified for decentralisation as part of the recently published Smith Review, now would be the perfect time to implement a cohesive rationalisation strategy.” “The implications of such a review could be immense for the lower-cost regional property markets. Both Leeds and Sheffield are proven locations for government relocations.” DTZ research shows that Grade A office space availability has increased slightly in the past few months with Leeds Metropolitan University Business School releasing 45,000sq ft at Hepworth Point, as part of a relocation into existing university building stock. But there was widespread consensus that the continuing shortage of quality space, and virtual non-existence of any speculative building, presented great opportunities for lower grade offices to be refurbished. Jones Lang LaSalle’s recently produced Reposition for Performance report suggested Central London offers the most compelling opportunity for such refurbishing, but regional centres, including Leeds, presented strong possibilities. The report claims that, with just 40,000sq ft of new office space presently under construction in Leeds and no further starts anticipated, there will be tightening of good quality space as take-up absorbs existing supply. Jeff Pearey, head of Jones Lang LaSalle’s Leeds office, said: “While Grade A supply in Leeds is relatively stable, one large transaction could quickly change the market barometer from feast to famine and shape market sentiment regarding strategic refurbishment. “Upgrading Grade B offices seems a logical, relatively low risk strategy to bridge any supply gap. We have seen this repositioning strategy work through our clients Town Centre Securities’ high quality redevelopment of Town Centre House in Leeds. It was the first refurbished office in the city centre to achieve a BREEAM excellent rating and is now nearly fully occupied.”
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CLOSE ENCOUNTERS
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For more information: Paul Fairhurst pfairhurst@savills.com
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For more information: Roddy Morrison roddy.morrison@collierscre.co.uk
168,750 sq ft of Grade A office space. 40,000 sq ft floorplates. Suites available now from 2,088 sq ft.
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21/06/2010 15:01
COMMERCIAL PROPERTY
SUMMER 10
Good reading: Bingley’s award-winning development includes a library as well as local and national retail outlets.
>> 5Rise gets gong Yorkshire-based developer 4Urban has been presented with a cup by Bingley Civic Trust for its redevelopment of 5Rise shopping centre. The prize, which is not presented annually, is given to a company or person that has made a significant contribution to the improvement of Bingley over the last 12 months. The 5Rise development has included the refurbishment of the local library in Bingley and enhanced shopping facilities which have already attracted local and national tenants such as Co-operative Food and Home Bargains.
>> Borders site gets new tenant Homesense, a discount home furnishings retailer that is owned, like TK Maxx, by the American TJX Group, has taken a unit on Spring Ram Retail Park by Junction 27 of the M62 in Birstall. The retailer is moving into the 11,400 sq ft retail unit, which used to be leased to collapsed bookshop chain Borders. It has agreed a rental of £32.50 per sq ft on a 15-year lease. The retail park, whose tenants also include Habitat, was bought by Leeds and London Investment in April last year for £8.1m from NPI, part of the Pearl Group. Alex Munro, head of commercial agency development at the Leeds office of Knight
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4Urban’s development director Richard Holmes said: “We are thrilled to receive this honour from Bingley Civic Trust. As a local resident I had been well aware that the retail facilities in Bingley had been inadequate for a number of years due to neglect, under-investment and failed promises. “Our redevelopment of 5Rise has always focused on the long-term benefits for the local community, so to have this recognised so soon after completion is a great honour.” 5Rise completed in December 2009 with over 65 per cent of the retail space already let. A further unit is currently under offer.
Frank, advised Leeds and London Investment on the acquisition and the subsequent letting. He said: “This transaction, involving a new tenant at one of the M62’s best-known retail parks, proves that deals can be done in this challenging climate, if the product is right. In this case, the location is one of the best retail warehouse locations in the North of England. The two tenants, Homesense and Habitat are both household retail names and take up 22,000sq ft of prime retail space. The retail park itself is adjacent to Birstall Shopping Park and Junction 27 Retail Park, as well as being close to IKEA.” London based Retail Warehouse specialists Morgan Williams advised Homesense.
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>> Plaque marks contribution A permanent plaque has been erected at Hesketh Lane playground in Morley to honour the two companies which donated £50,000 to transform the playground into a safe and modern facility for the local community. Sterling Capitol, which owns Capitol Park in Morley and Village Hotels, whose hotel is on the park, gave the money to enable the run-down playground in Hesketh Lane in Tingley to be completely redeveloped. The playground itself is now located to a more central part of the recreational
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COMMERCIAL PROPERTY
ground, which has reduced the impact on those living close by and improved access. Overall, the new playground has cost £140,000, with £90,000 coming from the Big Lottery Fund. Martin Croxen, the chief executive of Sterling Capitol, said: “As the developers of Capitol Park in Morley, we are always looking at ways in which we can support the local community. We have already provided new changing rooms and sports facilities at Glen Road and we are very happy to have helped the playground in Hesketh Lane.”
Huge city benefit: Bradford’s imposing Southgate development is a fine example of effective teamwork.
>> Claims handler for Airport West Altitude 4, part of Westcourt Properties’ Airport West development, has secured a new tenant with Argent Liability Adjusters taking 1,700sq ft of space. The new office is part of an eight-office network the liability claims handler operates across the UK. Airport West is located next to Leeds Bradford International Airport. The Altitude 4 building includes comfort cooling, full access raised floors, feature floor-to-ceiling windows and high quality fixtures and fittings throughout. Luke Dawson of Harvey Burns, joint agents for the site with DTZ, said: “Altitude 4 extends to approximately 8,319sq ft over two floors and benefits from 28 dedicated on-site car parking spaces. Availability within the building now totals 4,115sq ft following this letting.” Eamon Fox, associate director at DTZ said: “Altitude 4 offers the ideal location for Argent. The high spec building offers them the most modern in office design, within a highly landscaped environment with excellent connectivity to the motorway network and indeed Europe via Leeds Bradford Airport.”
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>> Southgate topped out Irish developer McAleer & Rushe has completed the topping out of its Southgate development in Bradford city centre, paving the way for the building to become the new headquarters of Provident Financial by this autumn. It will also house a 200-bed Jury’s Hotel The 250,000sq ft, £45m development, on the corner of Godwin Street and Thornton Road, is seen as a major step forward in the renaissance of Bradford city centre. McAleer & Rushe’s development director Stephen Surphlis said: “Southgate is one of
the few major developments in the north of England progressing in the current market. The benefit to Bradford is huge.” The development was made possible by a £6m loan to McAleer & Rushe by Bradford City Council, most of which has already been repaid, with the remainder being handed over in the next few months. Provident Financial chief executive Peter Crook said: “This has been a real team effort with McAleer & Rushe, Bradford City Council, Provident and many others all working together effectively.”
The 250,000sq ft, £45m development, on the corner of Godwin Street and Thornton Road, is seen as a major step forward in the renaissance of Bradford city centre
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COMMERCIAL PROPERTY
SUMMER 10
>> Holbeck site gets approval Leeds City Council has given permission for a 90,000sq ft office development with an associated 600-space car park and leisure facilities at a key site in the Holbeck Urban Village project. Leeds practice DLG Architects won the permission acting on behalf of its client Ace Investments. The site, at the junction of Sweet Street and Marshall Street, currently contains light industrial units of little architectural merit. DLG’s approved development proposals include the office accommodation split into two blocks of five storeys and the multi-storey car park that includes a large health and fitness gym. The design includes an “urban edge” to recreate a sense of enclosure. This also creates an opportunity to develop an urban park in the centre of the development which will provide an area of tranquillity protected from traffic noise by the buildings. An urban soundscape will be created through the use of running water and soft landscaping which will help to further breakdown traffic noise.
Sea of tranquility: The Holbeck Urban Village project has been designed with open spaces very much to the fore.
All the open spaces in and around the site have been designed to serve the wider area. To the front along Sweet Street, tree-lined pocket parks will be created, part of an ongoing ambition to allow it to become an avenue for future generations. The parks will provide seating and lighting, with the potential for games such as boules to take place as has already started happening successfully in other new developments in the city. Andrew Gardner, partner at DLG Architects, said: “This approval will unlock the development potential of this key site and be a real boost for Holbeck Urban Village.
There are a number of planning consents in existence for sites in close proximity to this one and we believe the multi-storey car park is an important element of the area’s regeneration. We have been supported by many existing businesses in Holbeck which all share the view that providing safe, secure parking will encourage more business into the area and help eliminate much of the illegal street parking.” Holbeck Urban Village is within easy access of Leeds station and the M621 motorway.
>> Prime Barnsley site acquired Property and investment company Opus North has bought a prime development site in Barnsley in a multi-million pound deal. The Ilkley-based company bought the site in Peel Street in Barnsley town centre, close to the new Gateway Plaza development, in conjunction with European supermarket chain Lidl. It will now be looking with Lidl to develop the site for a supermarket as part of a mixed use scheme. Andrew Duncan, managing director of Opus North, said: “This
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is a great development site with tremendous potential. The Gateway Plaza is giving Barnsley a new lease of life and the site is next door. It is a perfect location.” Duncan has been promoted to head Opus Land’s northern division, after the company decided to separate its operations in the Midlands and the North. Both divisions will continue to be backed Lidl scheme: Andrew Duncan, by Palmer Capital Partners. DTZ acted for Opus managing director of Opus North North in this deal.
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COMPANY PROFILE
Conference Leeds is the official convention bureau representing conference and event venues across Leeds and West Yorkshire.
FREE AND IMPARTIAL ONE-STOP CONFERENCE CONTACT
C
ONFERENCE Leeds take a great deal of pride in their work, aiming to provide you with everything you need to ensure your events and conferences are a success. They offer informed, impartial free advice on all aspects of bringing your event to Leeds and West Yorkshire, working with businesses and organisations in the region and from all over the UK and overseas. Free and Impartial Conference Leeds work with you to find the right venue and appropriate support services for your event, confirming availability, prices and making provisional bookings for you. Fully costed proposals are provided within 48 hours of your first contact. Free Registration Service Conference Leeds’ new web based system allows delegates to register on-line, choose options, make specific requests, and even tell you what they want to appear on their delegate badge! They provide a comprehensive real time reporting system so that at any time you know who has registered, which workshops they have booked, how many meals you need to order – everything you need to ensure the smooth running of your event. Free Accommodation Booking Service Conference Leeds will look after your delegate’s accommodation requirements for events held in Leeds and West Yorkshire. Working with the conference organiser they can take allocations at recommended hotels appropriate to your event and handle all aspects of booking accommodation for individual delegates. The web based system allows direct links from your website to a
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real-time, on-line booking system which allows delegates to pay by credit card or request a proforma invoice. Free Delegate Information Maps and visitor guides are provided to all delegates attending an event booked through Conference Leeds and the team are on hand during events to support the conference organiser and delegates. Testimonials
“THE HELP PROVIDED BY CONFERENCE LEEDS ALL THE WAY THROUGH THE PROCESS FROM CHOOSING A VENUE TO SELECTING AND LIAISING WITH HOTELS TO HELPING WITH REGISTRATIONS ON THE FIRST DAY OF THE CONFERENCE WAS INVALUABLE AND I CANNOT THANK YOU ENOUGH FOR CONTRIBUTING TO THE SMOOTH RUNNING OF THE CONFERENCE.”
The Conference Leeds team.
James Glavin, Office Manager The Terrence Higgins Trust
“AT THE BACD CONVENTION THE CONFERENCE LEEDS TEAM WERE CONSPICUOUS BY THEIR PRESENCE! THEY OFFERED AN EXTREMELY PROFESSIONAL AND FRIENDLY SERVICE BOTH IN THE LEAD-UP TO AND DURING OUR EVENT. THEY PLAYED A CRUCIAL ROLE IN ENSURING A HIGHLY SUCCESSFUL
If you’d like to know more please call to discuss your requirements, submit an enquiry via the website or send a e-mail.
Tony Rogers, Chief Executive British Association of Conference Destinations
Tel: 0113 220 6351 www.conference-leeds.com info@conference-leeds.com
CONVENTION.”
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BUSINESS QUARTER | SUMMER 10 21/06/2010 15:01
INTERVIEW
SUMMER 10
BARCELONA! The Catalan city and Leeds are closer than some people think. Peter Beber reports on a business and cultural initiative that answered a few questions but also raised a few. Just as this issue was going to press, a group of 20-odd lawyers from Barcelona were making an official visit to Leeds. Over two days they were due to take part in a seminar with Leeds lawyers looking at how to expand a legal business, and have an official dinner at the Royal Armouries. “We have 20 very significant lawyers coming,” Deborah Green, chief executive of Marketing Leeds, told this magazine just before they arrived. “Usually on these sorts of delegations you only get eight to ten people, so the fact that we have so many coming is a sign of how they value the city.” The Catalan delegation will be the latest return visit to be paid since Marketing Leeds itself organised a Leeds in Barcelona event back in March. Over the course of three days, a party of 115 Leeds business representatives (plus the odd hack) met key civic and business leaders from Barcelona. The Leeds delegates brought
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with them a troupe from Opera North, Northern Ballet Theatre and Phoenix Dance, who in a show as part of a formal dinner, were able to display just what a cultural powerhouse Leeds can be. In return, the delegates were shown some of Barcelona’s key new developments, including the @22 media district that has already attracted the likes of Yahoo, and the Fira, the city’s convention centre which has in its recent history succeeded in attracting the kind of trade shows most venues in Yorkshire can still sadly only dream about. Bread and Butter, one of Europe’s biggest fashion exhibitions, has only just stopped exhibiting there. In fact, Sonia Graupera, the director who showed delegates around, said that in the last two meetings she had had with potential exhibition organisers, the price of mounting a show there had not even been mentioned. She was probably being disingenuous. Those
exhibition organisers no doubt did have a price ceiling, which her quote managed to come in under, but they were probably even more interested in catching onto the coat tails of the sort of goodwill that has hovered over Barcelona pretty much ever since it hosted the Olympics way back in 1992. It is now a top city-break destination and remains an epitome of coolness, despite the worsening economic situation in Spain. Leeds could probably do with a dose of that as well. “The trip was a clever use of marketing and relatively low cost to put on,” says Howard Kew, chief executive of Financial Leeds, who
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was one of the delegates back in March. “It made sense to try to have an association with a superbrand like Barcelona.” The legal delegation were not, in fact, the first from Barcelona to make a return visit. Just to show how with it Leeds as a city is, Marketing Leeds hosted a reception for bloggers during the Leeds in Barcelona event, and a group of 15 Spanish bloggers have since made a return trip to see what the fuss is all about. “It was odd to see how protective the bloggers were about what they were doing, because they know everyone is going to see it almost immediately,” says Deborah Green. “They would all take a look around, and then go off into little corners on their own. But the coverage they gave us was amazingly positive, and quite insatiable.” Coverage has expanded out into more traditional media, too. “We have had articles in La Vanguardia – the main newspaper there,” says Green, “and two other publications have also written about Leeds.”
They would go off into little corners on their own but the coverage they gave us was amazingly positive and quite insatiable.
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INTERVIEW
Not surprisingly for someone with a keen interest in marketing, she can say what the value of all this free publicity is to Leeds down to the last penny. “We reckon it netted £964,423.98 in equivalent advertising space,” she says. There have already been more cultural exchanges promised too. “Phoenix Dance has already been invited over again by the Barcelona Bar Association,” she says, “and Northern Ballet Theatre has been invited to Madrid and Lisbon – and had some very positive leads.” But of course the main purpose of this trip, which came 18 months after Marketing Leeds’ inaugural foreign visit to Milan, was to build bridges for business, and to that extent the Catalan lawyers’ visit in June is perhaps more significant. In March, Leeds Legal, the association with aims to represent the legal sector in the city, signed a deal to work together with the Barcelona Bar Association, which despite the name, covers all lawyers in the city. >>
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INTERVIEW
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(The UK is actually the only country in the world where there is a split between solicitors and barristers.) A consensus seems to have been reached that there are strong possibilities for the two legal sectors to work together, particularly on matters relating to intellectual property. “We found that over there they tend to use US IP protection,” says Kew. “That’s fine except that the US is also the most expensive legal system in the world. We hope to show that we can offer them just as good IP protection that is much more cost-efficient.” Young lawyers’ groups from both cities have also jointly submitted a bid for EU funding to run a lawyer exchange programme, which James Haddleton, current president of the Leeds Law Society, thinks could reap big rewards at both ends. “What better way to develop exchange opportunities for young lawyers, and from that, who knows?” Deborah Green says the Leeds lawyers are also keen to help Creative Leeds, a group which represents creative and digital companies in the city, foster stronger links with the Barcelona lawyers, possibly in the hope of running a familiarisation visit again to Barcelona in October with more creative types. Creative Leeds was a relative latecomer in
signing up to come on Leeds in Barcelona, but chairman Steve Smith thinks they managed to “produce something of substance” by bringing with them Sir John Sorrell, chairman of the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE), who managed to wow many of the design-oriented Catalan delegates at a special dinner on the first night. As for possibilities of working together in the design field, the city already has a very successful Barcelona Design Week, and there have been initial discussions about replicating something similar in Leeds. “Barcelona has a strong tradition of architecture,” says Smith, “and we have some world-renowned architects in Leeds, so we have set up a sub-group to look at that.” Also in March, delegates from Leeds University met their counterparts from La Salle University and the Barcelona Polytechnic. According to Green, they are mounting a joint bid within the European framework programme to run research looking at how to make future cities more sustainable. There is even more excitement on the more “sexy” end of the creative industry. Screen Yorkshire met Catalan Film and Television – its Spanish counterpart – in Barcelona and subsequently at Cannes. There is now a real possibility of a script currently being developed
by an unnamed Yorkshire-based screenwriter and set in Girona being jointly developed by both parties into a film. They are meeting again in London this autumn. This is not as peripheral as it sounds. A source told this reporter that Vicky Cristina Barcelona, the Oscar-winning film Woody Allen film that revived interest in the city a couple of years ago, was only based in Barcelona because the city bid most to have Allen come and film his already-completed script there. It could conceivably just as easily have been Vicky Cristina Leeds. Not to be outdone, there was a group of Leeds hoteliers at the Barcelona event who, according to Deborah Hindley, manager of the Leeds Hotel Association, had a successful meet-the-buyer event with Barcelona-based conference buyers. “Their existing knowledge of Yorkshire was better than it was in Milan where it was very basic,” she says. “In Barcelona they seemed to know a lot of what Yorkshire was about. We have since surveyed those who came and they are very interested in what Leeds has to offer. We are arranging with our partners to organise a familiarisation visit in October.” But what about those representing perhaps Leeds’ most significant business sector, financial services? Financial Leeds ran a
Hola Leeds: Barcelona’s mayor Jordi Hereu i Boher, left, meets the Lord Mayor of Leeds, Councillor Judith Elliot. Right: Barcelona International convention centre.
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INTERVIEW
It’s really a generational thing. Just as the media people from our delegation thought Barcelona was a generation ahead, we thought it was a generation behind.
seminar on access to markets and, according to Howard Kew, found that Spain is far less sophisticated than Britain in how it organises its small capital markets. So there could be an opening there. But you get the feeling from his carefully chosen words that he was perhaps expecting a little more awareness of the event from the Catalan side. “Hard business benefits are always difficult to measure,” he says. “You can get hung up on bums on seats when a lot of it is about quality rather than quantity. The turnout at our seminar was less than we expected but the quality was good.” He says the whole expedition still cost less than a two-day conference in London. Deborah Green, meanwhile, points out that the remit of her organisation is very much to bring trade organisations together. It is the likes of UKTI, she says, to create the kind of trips where business deals are signed. “In any case we did find a venture capital fund in Spain looking for IP expertise who we were able to help. And two delegates got help from a Catalan adviser in a deal worth £50,000.” But just how effective is it to compare the two cities? They would appear to have some similarities on the surface. Both are former textile producers that are part of a larger city region, and both are constantly battling against being seen as secondary to their capital cities. But already differences are starting to emerge. In many ways Barcelona isn’t really the second city in Spain, but is the first city in Catalonia, a region with its own autonomy and language. Much of what gets done in the city is decided on not by the national government, but by the regional Catalan government and in many cases, the city council and mayor. It’s an autonomy that
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Yorkshire should envy, and one that James Haddleton believes has led to great things. “We are very cautious and conservative in Leeds,” he says, “and that doesn’t always allow for entrepreneurial flair. Look, for example, at the Gaudi buildings in Barcelona. At the time they were built people would have really objected to them, but they carried on with them anyway and now everyone comes to see them. Leeds could learn from that.” Howard Kew would concur, adding that the decision to bid for the Olympics was a similarly bold risk. “The bid ended up being good but it might not have looked so at the time because then the whole Olympics idea was looking wobbly,” he says. But some would also argue that the way things are done in Barcelona isn’t as rosy and self-fulfilling as some would have you believe. At a briefing during the Leeds in Barcelona event, Martyn Warr, UKTI director of trade in Iberia and himself a Yorkshireman, pointed out that major infrastructure projects, such as improvements at Barcelona Airport, are still very much the responsibility of the central Spanish government. That is something Leeds folk will need to consider when the transport debate rages at home. Kew went on the visit to the Barcelona Stock Exchange, but says he did not see anything there that made him envious that we do not have a similar regional exchange in Leeds. “I really thought it was a club for old guys who wanted to smoke strong cigarettes,” he says. “There was nothing they were doing that I couldn’t have done from my PC at home. The local society is sympathetic to such an institution and who wouldn’t want to work in a beautiful building like that? But it’s really a generational thing. Just as the media people from our delegation thought Barcelona was a
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generation ahead, we thought it was a generation behind.” Jim Vincent, managing director of the Royal Armouries International, was also fascinated to discover that a conference theatre within the Fira capable of holding 2,500 people was used fewer than 30 days in the year. “That suggests people are right to say the proposed new Leeds Arena should not have a conference hall and should only be an entertainment venue,” he explains. “After all, if they can’t make a venue like that work better in Barcelona the chances of us being able to do so in Leeds are even more remote.” So where next? There has been talk of the next Leeds foreign trip being somewhere in Asia, and Green says Marketing Leeds may go out to Hong Kong in the autumn to research ideas there. Kew says he would be happy to go on the next such excursion. Since March there has, of course, been a change in political control at Leeds City Council, one of Marketing Leeds’ main backers. The new leader of the council, Keith Wakefiled, has not always been supportive of the organisation. It was he who first drew to the public attention back in 2005 the fact that the “Leeds Live It Love It” logo the agency had just launched was not original. However Green insists that for the moment at least it is business as usual. Whatever happens, at least one benefit of the Barcelona visit everyone commented on was the ability to network among themselves. That might sound an expensive way of doing so, but Vincent for one is pleased. “In terms of immediate success it has been very useful,” he says. “We normally wouldn’t have met the people from Leeds Legal, but, thanks to the lawyers coming, they have now booked an event that is worth £3,000 to us.” n
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ENTREPRENEUR
SUMMER 10
BOX CLEVER In recent months, the organic vegetable home-delivery business has seen several doors close in its face. Peter Baber talks to the farmers who will push and push until they swing open again When the cruel winds of the recession first blew into the UK, the sages in the national press were quick to report the death of one particular trend. A trend that, in their typical style, they had spent a good part of the past decade naming as the next big thing. The organic vegetable delivery box scheme, through which Britain’s consumers could have organic vegetables delivered direct to their door, was said to be doomed. Back in June 2008, the Daily Telegraph (more particularly, one writer by the quintessentially Telegraph name of Harry Wallop) was reporting how something that had once been “the ultimate badge of being a member of the foodie middle classes” was now “falling foul of the credit crisis” and that “soil-dusted artichokes, fennel and kale” were losing their appeal. “Thousands of families have been cancelling their boxes, deeming them an ‘unaffordable luxury’ in the economic downturn,” the report claimed. This would indeed be bad news for a sector once seen as being so sexy that Phoenix Equity Partners had made a substantial investment in
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one scheme, Abel & Cole, just nine months earlier. The report quoted a sales director from London, who had had to give up her delivery box because she and her husband were remortgaging their house and could no longer afford paying for such a scheme. And it quoted a civil servant from Twickenham with a double-barreled name, who was giving up her scheme too, but had “no regrets” about doing so, because – horror of horrors – “we never used it up each week.” It then went onto lament the demise of one of
the country’s oldest such schemes, based, as it happens, in North Yorkshire – although as is often the case in pieces run by Londoncentred media organisations, North Yorkshire sounded as if it wasn’t much less remote than outer Siberia. Well, as so often happens with stories from the national press, the truth has proved to be a little more complicated than that. This year, as we see the first faintest glimmer through the mist of possible brighter days ahead, there is still bad news for some in the organic movement. >>
Thousands of families have been cancelling their boxes, deeming them an ‘unaffordable luxury’ in the economic downturn
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ENTREPRENEUR
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ENTREPRENEUR
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We have a good support chain too the produce gets delivered to fridges on farms, and then picked up by the local door step delivery franchise
Fertile minds: Peter Richardson, right, owner of Home Farm, with farm manager Marc Smith. Previous page, checking the radish crop In April the Soil Association reported that total organic sales – not just those from delivery boxes, but organic sales in supermarkets too – had fallen in 2009 by almost 13 per cent. It was the first annual decline since the organisation which monitors organic farming first began keeping records in 1993. But there is one organic delivery scheme that is bucking the trend quite considerably – and it just happens to be based in North Yorkshire too. Home Farm, Newby Wiske, near Northallerton, has seen deliveries rise by between 35 and 40 per cent last year. Farm manager Marc Smith says that is partly down to the increasing geographic spread of their deliveries. “We are going into new areas like Scarborough, Huddersfield, Rotherham, Bradford and Halifax,” he says. The farm is the northernmost outreach of Riverford, the UK’s largest organic vegetable
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box delivery scheme with a turnover nationwide of around £34m. Abel & Cole may be better known, thanks in good part to Phoenix Equity Partners’ investment, but Riverford’s founder Guy Watson maintains that his organisation has a lead on Abel & Cole in terms of turnover of around £7m. He adds that even after stripping the new areas out, Home Farm’s individual trade has gone up 20 per cent in the last year. The five other main farms in the organisation’s network have not seen growth on anything like that scale, although Watson insists trade has largely stayed level. “We have seen a dip in certain areas,” he says, “mainly from people who bought into the whole scheme as part of a trend. But we are winning customers back now. People want what is good to eat, they want food that tastes good.”
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Home Farm itself can also take most of the credit for its growth. Abel & Cole may collect all it stock centrally for distribution, but Riverford leaves delivery very much down to individual farms. In Home Farm’s case this is a network of ten different delivery franchises, so its success is very much down to owner, Peter Richardson, and Smith. “We have a good support chain too the produce gets delivered to fridges on farms, and then picked up by the local door step delivery franchise,” says Smith. “So it’s field to doorstep in 24 hours, although we have to work this at certain times.” Allowing individual businesses to organise deliveries over a relatively small area encourages them build up a stronger rapport with local customers: Home Farm has one of the highest customer satisfaction ratings of any of the farms within the Riverford group.
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It has certainly been a big change for Richardson. His family haven’t exactly been on the farm for generations, but his father was a tenant farmer who bought the farm off the shipbuilding Duxford family in 1956. He says he first became aware of the advantages of diversifying into organic farming in the mid-1990s. “At the time we were a conventional mixed farm with a few pigs and sugar beet as a vegetable,” he says. “The accepted wisdom was that you couldn’t convert to organic farming with pigs because of the technicalities of doing it. But we gradually moved over from 1998. We started with potatoes, then courgettes, then parsnips, then brassicas. Four or five years ago I started looking at the idea of having a vegetable delivery box. And was already familiar with Riverford, and decided to join them.” That was in 2007, and becoming part of the Riverford organisation involved a personal investment on Richardson’s side of £500,000. Watson says that a farm just outside Northallerton was “perhaps a bit further north than was ideal.” The other farms in the network are Watson’s own farm and cooperative in Devon, as well as farms in Hampshire, Peterborough and Cheshire. “But we wanted someone who was trustworthy and had similar aspirations,” he says. “We were looking for a long-term relationship. That has certainly been borne out since with Peter.” Richardson says his family were in the end enthusiastic about the move. “My dad was actually very supportive,” he says. “He is 75 but can still put a full day’s work in. In the early years a lot of people thought we were mad, but they have since looked over the farm and discovered that we have grown some very good crops. It has certainly surpassed my early expectations. We have been able to increase our higher value crops dramatically. I didn’t in the end take any conversion payments when we changed over, but I still take £20 an acre for being organic, and I still take the single farm payment. Previously you couldn’t claim for that on vegetable land.” Wisely choosing not to put all his eggs in one basket, he hasn’t turned all of his 500 acres over to Riverford. Some 30 per cent is still
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ENTREPRENEUR
organically farmed for supermarkets, although he is open-minded about how much longer this arrangement will continue. Stories of individual farmers’ fraught relationships with the supermarket giants are, of course, legion. Whole books have been written about them, but both Richardson and Smith are particularly irked at supermarkets’ reactions to the scabs that can develop on up to 20 per cent of all the potatoes they grow organically. These are totally harmless to humans, and easy to peel off. For Riverford’s own customers the company overcompensates by adding more potatoes to the box. But the supermarkets automatically send all such potatoes back, resulting in enormous waste. Even for a vegetable farmer, however, the move to Riverford has resulted in Richardson growing some crops he might not have been so keen to have before. Take kohl rabi, for
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instance – a root vegetable not unlike celeriac or turnip. “Personally I don’t like it,” he says. “We have also had to grow cauliflower. Lots and lots of cauliflower.” But people’s lack of knowledge about native vegetables and subsequent hostility to them is one thing Riverford has picked up in the copious customer research it carries out. You could almost claim that this was not so much a lack of knowledge as a loss of knowledge, as our grandparents would be more than familiar with such things as beetroot and swede. The company has sought to overcome this by including recipe leaflets in every delivery box suggesting what customers can do with this week’s vegetables, and keeping a store of seasonal vegetables on its website which is constantly changing. It can and does supply the kind of more >>
BUSINESS QUARTER |SUMMER 10 21/06/2010 15:03
ENTREPRENEUR Mediterranean and exotic fruit and vegetables that have become a more staple part of the British diet in recent decades – but these are sourced from farms in Spain. The company may be committed to reducing its carbon footprint, but Smith, who before he joined Riverford in 2007 worked on a 1,500 acre farm in Kenya with some 600 workers, and comes from a family of Wensleydale farmers, has doubts about whether it would ever be economically, environmentally or socially worthwhile to try to replicate such conditions at home in the UK. “Peppers and cucumbers are usually better under polytunnels in Spain,” he says. The company does however, lorry-freight everything from Spain. It has a commitment to never air-freight anything. And in the meantime it is also trying to encourage more people in Britain to revert to cooking native vegetables by creating a series of Riverford cook books published by Fourth Estate. In fact, increasing Riverford’s and Home Farm’s
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profiles is one of the key objectives Richardson and Smith have for the next few years. “We are taking part in Open Farm Sunday, which is all about encouraging farmers to open their gates out to the public,” says Smith. “We have had an asparagus evening too, although we are not necessarily opening out more to pick your own. We are having a Mongolian yurt on the farm this summer, too, and an 80-seater restaurant in a field. We will be cooking lots of familiar products during August.” All that is well and good, but how easy has it been in recent months to convert more people to the organic idea? After all, a couple of months ago the Food Standards Agency (FSA), which you might have thought would look kindly on a movement that claims to be removing unnecessary chemicals from the food chain, brought out a report suggesting that there were little if any benefits to be had from eating organic. The publicity this report attracted, and the associated media comment suggesting that the organic movement had finally been exposed as hype, has, perhaps not surprisingly, considerably angered Watson. “I am tired of the press,” he says. “After giving us pretty much total admiration for ten years in the past two years they have become totally biased. The FSA was a case in point.” Smith says the company’s research has shown customers are swayed by other reasons than health benefits anyway. “The main reason consumers buy organic is for their taste and freshness,” he says. “We hear anecdotes all the time on this.” Both he and Watson are pinning much more of their hopes on an EU-funded report being prepared by Professor Carol Leifert from
Newcastle University which is examining organic farming much more exhaustively. “They are looking at the whole thing for a year,” says Smith, “because it’s only after then that you start to see how organic crops get the right antibodies and so on.” Watson is much more scornful. “The FSA are pretty much the only people who came to the conclusion they did,” he says. “Elsewhere in Europe people have reached a very different conclusion, and that leads me to think the FSA had it in for organic farming.” They are not, however, zealots for the organic movement. Neither Smith nor Richardson nor Watson see organic farming as something that will take over from conventional farming. And Smith adds that it is perfectly all right to farm and eat meat. He does, for one. He says the stereotype image people have about organic food only being a fad for the very wealthy – an idea the Telegraph article may have enhanced – is inaccurate. Riverford’s research has found that by far its greatest customer segment comes from hard-pressed young families. “Rich people tend to go out for dinner more,” he says. Claims that Riverford products are cheaper than supermarkets, however, start to look a little bit weak when you realise they are only being compared with supermarkets’ organic products. You could say then that the organic movement presents a useful and necessary diversification for a sector that in England has been seen as declining for some time. Certainly Richardson has noticed the impact going organic has had. “Between 25 and 30 people work on the farm now,” he says. “It was just eight people two years ago. That’s a big change.” n
We are taking part in Open Farm Sunday, which is all about encouraging farmers to open their gates out to the public
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BUSINESS LUNCH
SUMMER 10
in association with
get ahead, take a lot of sugar They called her The Rottweiler on The Apprentice, but Claire Young was just keeping things simple, writes Peter Baber
“I get papped every time I go out of there,” says Claire Young about the venue for BQ’s last Working Lunch, the Restaurant Bar & Grill in Leeds. “Honestly! I had just said in another interview that the great thing about moving back to Yorkshire was how low-key everything is, but I had just said that and then I walked out of there and got papped. My reaction was: ‘How did you get here?’” ‘Papped’, for those of you who may be unfamiliar with the term, means getting photographed by the paparazzi. Claire would have every reason to be papped, having been a runner up in what is probably the UK’s favourite business-related TV show, The Apprentice.
She appeared in Series 4. That was broadcast in 2008. We have already seen Series 5 (remember Yasmina?), are about to see Series 6, and the BBC has just opened applications for Series 7. So time has moved on, and although she says she is not interested in being a celebrity –“I turned down huge amounts of money to do telly stuff,” she says – it is her willingness to talk about being “papped” that causes this interviewer to think otherwise. For example, when she tells me not to report something she has said about Alan Sugar and I ask her why she should be worried if it were true, her only explanation is that he is “good friends with Rupert Murdoch”, >>
Shrewed business mind: Apprentice star Claire Young at Eastthorpe Hall
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I woke up on New Year’s Day in 2007 thinking that something big was going to happen that year
so presumably her burgeoning TV career might be at risk. She does have such a career; she is shortly to be presenter of a Channel 5 programme called The Hirer. “Every week a real job is given away and it’s aimed at £30,000-a-year jobs, looking at the whole issue of mastering interviews and CV preparation,” she says. But to be fair, what’s wrong with trying to hold on to what you have? Everyone remembers Claire, the “Rottweiler” as she was called at the time, the bolshy one who still holds the record for the number of appearances she had in the “boardroom” and yet made it through to the final. As our interview continues over a buffet lunch in the gorgeously peaceful garden of Eastthorpe Hall in Mirfield, it becomes clear that another reason for not wanting to divulge too much about Amstrad’s founder is the fact that he has become a genuine friend. “I was at No. 10 with him a week ago,” she says, “and he was introducing me to everybody. To have someone like him as support is great. I value my relationship a lot.” She has learned a lot from him too, in the six months she worked for him, particularly about the need to specify the market you are aiming at in any business, and the need to keep things simple. “Sir Alan is very simple about things,” she says. “All he really wants to know is where the
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numbers are. Whenever I am advising a new business now I always think: ‘Are we overcomplicating this?’ Because that is usually the failing. You have passionate people diving off in all directions. You forget really basic stuff, like, for example, if you are making cupcakes, how are you going to get them from A to B? Never mind about whether they have mottos on.” That kind of mentality betrays a shrewd business mind. This is certainly not someone who got through The Apprentice by fluke and is now milking it for all it is worth. She was interested in reality TV; she also applied for Big Brother and only gave up when her friends didn’t get through the first audition. But she had a serious career track record.
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This is someone who made a new discovery while she was writing her dissertation on equine science at Bristol University and had won funding to pursue it as a PhD before she realised there was little money to be made in, as she puts it, “trotting around the world in polo yards.” “But I did my dissertation on the intra-pituitary regulation of seasonal gonadotropins,” she says, “and if somebody took it up you could take the research from this into racing yards.” She was then one of ten successful applicants out of the 5,000 who applied to win a place on L’Oreal’s graduate training scheme. “I was on the scheme for eight weeks before I got taken off and put into an operational job,” she says. “They said: ‘You look like you know
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BUSINESS LUNCH Easthorpe Hall
what you are doing.’ In reality I didn’t have a clue, but it is the ability to make decisions and be proactive that counts in life.” Although she only stayed at L’Oreal for a couple of years, she went on to work for Colgate-Palmolive and from there was headhunted to work for the Hong Kong-based company that owns Superdrug, eventually becoming the retail chains buyer for haircare products. Only then did The Apprentice beckon. It’s an impressive CV, only marred slightly by her gripe that she didn’t like the way that in L’Oreal they sent internal emails in French. She is right in pointing out that they should have mentioned this fact at interview, but it is, after all, a French company. She can talk perceptively about the different cultures of the two large multinationals she worked for. “If you had a combination of L’Oreal and Colgate-Palmolive you would have the perfect business model,” she says. “The good thing about L’Oreal was the passion. If you spoke to a brand manager and said: ‘How is Elvive performing in the market?’ you would be there for half an hour. Whereas if you said: ‘Let’s see your P&L,’ they wouldn’t know what you meant. Colgate-Palmolive was exactly the opposite. It had a 60 per cent market share in toothpaste, which is incredible, but they were like: ‘Yeah, it’s all right, oh and here’s my spreadsheet.’” Unlike some other former Apprentice
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candidates – unlike even her persona on the show itself, in fact, she is remarkably unbitchy. The person she lost out to on The Apprentice was Lee McQueen, who was found to have lied on his CV. You might expect her to say something about that. But she is genuinely puzzled about how this omission slipped through the net. Because of what had happened in the previous series, where Katy Hopkins had walked out at the last minute when she was widely expected to win, claiming she had never really been interested in the job in the first place, Claire says the producers were relentless in checking her out. “They went and interviewed all my old bosses,” she says. “I don’t really know how Lee got through. You can’t lie.” Indeed this leaves me wondering a bit about just how The Apprentice worked. But Claire says there are many things about the show that the viewer may not realise, including the fact that candidates are being recorded all the time. “The only time you don’t have a mike on is in the shower,” she says. “When you go into the boardroom you don’t know if your team has won or lost because production take your takings off you. So you take a gamble when they say: ‘Was so and so a good project manager?’ Do you say: ‘No they were rubbish,’ and then find you have won and you get a treat and it’s World War III out there? Or do you say: ‘Yeah they were really good,’ and >>
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The main road through Mirfield is dusty and noisy, a gear-changing toil for anyone hoping to reach Dewsbury or places further east. Eastthorpe Hall lies on this very road, but step inside its front door and you will instantly feel like you have arrived in some exotic oasis, a feeling enhanced by the Mongolian yurt stationed at the bottom of its elegant walled garden. In the summer months you can choose to have one of the many treatments on offer in this yurt, although there are plenty of rooms in the main building itself if the weather is just too chilly. The list of treatments is endless – even including the nation’s only chemical-free colon hydrotherapy treatment. This writer, being a scaredy-cat bloke, didn’t try that out, but opted for a massage instead. The clientele is overwhelmingly female, but proprietor Steph Barraclough says they want to encourage more men, “because once they are through the door they love it”. After or before your treatment you can relax in one of the many lounges or the day beds out by the ornamental pond, have an impressive buffet (which yes, can include wine – it’s not that strict a regime), or have a gentle swim in the indoor pool. The spa was started by Barraclough in 1999 after she recovered from cancer. “I had been very ill, and I wanted somewhere to go that was not too spa-like, where you could go just to collapse and be looked after,” she says. “It’s just developed from there.” It certainly has. Eastthorpe Hall won the Day Spa of the Year award at the Professional Beauty Awards in 2007. It has also just come in the top five out of over 700 for customer service in the 2010 Good Spa Guide. In fact it was just pipped to the winning post by Radgale Hall in Leicestershire, something of an industry veteran.
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BUSINESS LUNCH then you lose, and you end up saying it was because the leader was bad when you have just said they were good?” It’s not surprising she describes the whole experience as being “like a school trip on steroids”. But it’s also clear that what got her through the show, what could well have got her through much her career, is her amazing sense of drive. She admits as much herself, but says there is nothing wrong with such an attitude. In fact, judging by the number of times she says it she seems to be waging a war against what she calls the “CBA – can’t be arsed” attitude that she sees everywhere around her. “One of my pet hates is people who talk the talk but don’t deliver,” she says. “People come up to me and say: ‘I could do the Apprentice,’ and I say: ‘Why haven’t you?’” Of course, putting yourself forward like that requires a certain amount of confidence, too. But just listen to this on how she knew she was going to get on The Apprentice in the first place. “I woke up on New Year’s Day in 2007 thinking that something big was going to happen that year. And when I was watching Series 3 of The Apprentice, when they were in the French farmer’s market, I thought: ‘I could do this, and I am going to be in the final this time next year.’ “All my friends were like: ‘Yeah, right’. But I was.” Fortunately for this story she has carried that drive on to new projects. She is amazed at the number of former Apprentice candidates who, having been through the experience, ended up back in their old jobs. She suspects this is CBA again. “For me the whole process was like someone had got hold of my brain and pulled it all apart, and off you go,” she says. “I was a completely different person.” So having built up a wedding planner business and successfully sold it on, her latest projects include launching two social enterprises – both of which she insists will be thoroughly commercially grounded. “To register social enterprises at Companies House you now have to prove they are sustainable,” she says, “because so many go
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bust after a year.” The first of these is an organisation called Girls Out Loud, which aims to raise the aspirations of teenage girls at school. Claire insists – without being asked – that she is not a feminist, and has only been inspired by the girls she has met on many visits to schools since her appearance on The Apprentice. “I see more concern with girls when I am in schools,” she says. “One girl turned up and I could smell the alcohol on her breath. She had had a bottle of Malibu in her bag all day. They are aged 13 dating 25-year-olds and are completely obsessed about what they look like.” But I rather wonder whether her education at Wakefield Girls High School under head teacher Pat Langham – since awarded a CBE for services to education – might not have something to do with it. The uninitiated might not know that girls who take part in the Duke of Edinburgh scheme are not usually required to carry their own kit. At Wakefield, however, they were – at Pat Langham’s insistence. The other social enterprise is an agency booking speakers for schools as part of their enterprise education, a portion of whose profits will go into launching a nationwide
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enterprise competition. Claire is now deeply engaged in her role as a speaker. “I love speaking,” she says. “It’s so ironic that I got told off for talking by Sir Alan, and now I am making a living from it.” She works for a large number of Government and other agencies, including Connexions, Girl Guides, and the Special Schools Academy Trust. She is also writing a book – a girl’s survival guide. Very positively, she chooses to do this right here in Yorkshire. Despite not having any family connections here, she has returned to live in Wakefield, where she grew up. She says: “I was stuck in traffic for three hours in London, and thought ‘that’s it’. I put my flat on the market and it rented that evening. “My goal on leaving university was to have a beautiful horse within ten years, and I’ve just bought an ex-racehorse. I can only do that here.” It certainly makes a refreshing change from the usual minor celebrity who only comes up north to dash down south again. After speaking to BQ Claire is off to inspire a group of schoolkids in Hull. Judging by the tweets she let them post later, they were deeply inspired. n
Over the past five years, Watson Burton’s Leeds office has developed a strong reputation for being professional and pragmatic whilst remaining approachable and always delivering value. It achieves this by offering experts who work in partnership with clients to provide high quality legal advice at competitive rates.
Find out how Watson Burton could help your company by contacting Matthew Dalzell, Property Partner. 0113 235 5702, matthew.dalzell@ watsonburton.com
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clear practical advice
When managing risk and making complex business decisions you need a law firm that understands your point of view. At Watson Burton we take the time to understand your business objectives and work in partnership to help you achieve long-term success. To discuss your business needs call our legal experts
0113 235 5455 www.watsonburton.com BQY Issue 5.indb 45
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STURMAN ON WINE
SUMMER 10
NEEDS MUST Paddy Sturman, head of banking and finance at Yorkshire law firm Gordons, breaks a habit and takes a sip of South Africa
With the World Cup upon us, South Africa was the choice for this edition of the BQ wine review and for my debut – and no doubt final – appearance as a wine connoisseur! I’ll get my excuses in early. I have never chosen to drink South African wine, which is probably a “hangover” from my childhood when all things South African were generally avoided for political reasons. Whilst I enjoy a good deal of New World wine,
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I tend to gravitate to the regions I know. Wonderful memories of a couple of days in the Hunter Valley in Australia on honeymoon with my wife Bess and an earlier holiday we had with friends in Chile’s Maipo and Central Valleys tend to pop into my mind and influence me when I walk into my local wine shop. I therefore didn’t have too much idea of what to expect when the bottles arrived on my desk at work. It was going to be interesting to taste and form opinions on two wines from two regions in South Africa of which I had scarcely heard. It was going to be a much greater challenge to delve into a world of unknowns where I was going to have to listen to my palate rather than rely on pre-conceived ideas of what to expect. The white wine was a 2008 La Motte Sauvignon Blanc from Franschhoek Valley. Bess and I drank it on a sunny June evening in our front garden. We were spotted and soon after visited by the neighbours, the effect being that we had much less to taste than we were anticipating. It was a good wine for a summer evening – fresh and lively like all Sauvignon Blanc – more gooseberry and lychees than a Pouilly Fume or a Sancerre, but not as much as the sometimes overbearing New Zealand Sauvignons. The wine was a 2008 vintage making it perfect to drink now. To adopt a World Cup analogy, it is a bit of a Michael Owen of the wine world – best young, it won’t get better with age. The red wine was a Graham Beck, Anthony’s Yard 2008 Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Cabernet Franc blend. It was shared around my family after the christening of my two sons, Theo and Louis. This was the type of wine which really has to be served with food and we all agreed it accompanied the lightly spiced lamb particularly well. It had intense blackcurrant (and for me, cooked plum, although others disagreed) aromas together with a hint of that fantastic
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yet ambiguous earthy/musty flavour which from time-to-time appears in red wine, particularly when aged. Despite the strong cassis aroma, the fruit was somewhat restrained on the palate – probably thanks to the Cabernet Franc which is a more reserved grape than Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon – lending it some Bordeaux qualities. I found this a much more interesting wine than the white. Perhaps the blend of Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc gave it that touch of ambiguity and sophistication that the Sauvignon Blanc lacked. I would recommend both of these wines and my pleasurable experience of them means I will certainly seek out and try more South African wines. Only time will tell whether I will be able to enjoy a particularly satisfying glass toasting England’s winning of the World Cup. n 2008 La Motte Sauvignon Blanc £9.49. 2008 Graham Beck Anthony’s Yard Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot & Cabernet Franc £7.99. Both wines were supplied by Majestic who have branches throughout Yorkshire. They can also be bought online www.majestic.co.uk
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MOTORING
SUMMER 10
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MOTORING
HERE COMES THE DRIVE
Decisions, decisions. Ken Brook-Chrispin, chief executive and chairman of Seabrook Crisps, has a choice. Is it to be an Aston Martin or falling for a continental beauty?
A few months ago I’d decided the love affair with my Bentley was finally coming to an end, and it was time to invest in something new. Something sporty, something beautiful, possibly something British, but definitely something with four doors. After exploring the options I called the kind people at Aston Martin and placed an order for one Rapide, a true supermodel of the car world. And so there I was. At the altar of automobiles, ready to happily commit my life (for richer, for poorer, etc) to the Rapide. But just as the priest is doing his whole “speak now or forever hold your peace” bit, BQ magazine come along and thrust one of the most eagerly awaited cars in recent years
Our brief encounter didn’t get off to the best of starts when my German supermodel turned up late for our first date
under my nose – the Porsche Panamera. Not only that, but they asked me to take her away for the weekend and get to know her a bit. Now our brief encounter didn’t get off to the best of starts when my German supermodel turned up late for our first date, and I was in meetings all afternoon, so it wasn’t until 6:30 on Friday evening that any serious flirting began. So what did I think of the Panamera? Well at first glance she’s stunning – everything you’d expect from a Porsche. But then at second glance she seems a little odd. Like her legs are too short for her body, or her arms are too long. And the same with glances three, four and five. Because the Panamera can’t seem to make up her mind what kind of car she is. From the front she’s a 911, but walk around the side and she turns into a bloated Chrysler Crossfire coupe. And from another angle she’s something entirely different again. As brides go, the Panamera is more Bride of Frankenstein than Bride of Brook-Chrispin. But as we’ve all been told by our mothers, looks aren’t everything, and there was every chance the Panamera would turn out to have the most amazing personality. And she didn’t disappoint. The engine is one of the most powerful and refined I’ve driven, and she handles and holds the road superbly; all big ticks. She’s also got some clever features like automatic hill hold, a fuel-saving engine that switches off when stationary, and air suspension that helps you glide effortlessly from A to B. >>
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But sadly that’s where the ticking seemed to stop, and I found myself being niggled by tiny things like the funny displays, the lack of steering wheel controls, the paddle shift, the poor turning circle, and the fact I was worried I wouldn’t be able to fit my new driver in the boot. No, the type of driver you hit a golf ball with. (Although with the state of my game at the moment, leaving my driver at home might be a good thing.) And there’s the overly practical headroom they’ve given it at the expense of sleek design. I’m sure the
Panamera will be driven by some people with big heads, but you could fit a Globetrotter in here. (There’s another joke to be made here about Globetrotters and jet-setters, but we need to start to wrap this up.) And so after a whirlwind weekend we head back to the altar, where the priest has been waiting patiently – he must be hungry by now – and continue with our vows. Was my head turned by the Panamera? Well, yes. For a moment. In the same way your head might be briefly turned by someone reading a magazine
I’m sure the Panamera will be driven by some people with big heads, but you could fit a Globetrotter in here.
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meant for 16-year-olds on the bus. Will I be calling Aston Martin to cancel my order for the Rapide? Not on your Nelly. Finally, I’ve hopefully got enough room to squeeze in a story of a friend of mine who recently employed a rather simple handyman at his home. On his first day the man told my friend he could neither cut the lawn – on account of his hay fever, nor clean anything – due to the chemicals in cleaning fluids. Eventually they agreed the man could paint, so my friend asked him to paint the porch at the front of the house. Three hours later he returned and declared, “I’ve finished the painting m’lord. And by the way it wasn’t a Porsche, it was a Bentley.” n Car supplied by JCT600, from the Porsche Centre, Leeds. 0844 844 3344, www.jct600.co.uk Model featured, Porsche Panamera 4S, from £80,087 inc. VAT
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DRILL FOR SHOOTING PARTIES So, you wear your shoes in a boggy field then poke holes in the top to help them dry? This way your feet will also stay cool. Oh, yeah? The brogue is back big-style says Chris Porter “I used to know this old guy and he’d say to me that his philosophy of shoes was that all a man needs is three pairs of brogues: one pair for the town, one pair for the country and one pair for the beach,” says the shoe designer Guy West of Jeffery-West. “You can understand why some men may take that
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attitude to footwear. Summer is so short in the UK it’s tempting not to invest in the kind of shoes that will hardly be worn.” Of course, with increased travel and the breakdown of the more rigid workplace dress codes, men are more adventurous with their shoes. But contrary to fashion’s idea that it is
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acceptable to wear plimsolls all year round and in all weathers (contrary to sodden feet and bouts of flu), men it seems are rediscovering the attractions of the battle-ready, benchmade, Goodyear-welted shoe - both conservatism and value-consiousness being products of the recession that encourage their purchase. When a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do, that may include breaking his new shoes in a bit. But, more than that, one style of shoe in particular is seeing a renaissance; the brogue. Or maybe even “the new brogue”. Trickers, which has won something of a cult following for its hefty country styles teamed with denim has, for example, launched styles in vibrant bottle green and blue leathers, with contrasting white eyelets. It has recently teamed up Japanese designers Junya Watanabe and Comme Des Garcons on a line of co-respondent brogue styles, and with shoe retailer Kurt Geiger to create a limited edition range. Similarly, Loakes is offering styles with a more aggressive, slim-line shape. And since being bought by Italian fashion giant the Prada Group, Churches has re-addressed the style not in the standard blacks and tans, but in high-gloss grey. And if such a thing as a “summer brogue” might a season ago have been considered oxymoronic, this summer the company has created it. Its Blakeney style comes in sand suede on a chunky-butlightweight red-brick sole. Indeed, if today’s brogue was made in a way to echo the style’s origins, it might genuinely be an ideal shoe for warmer months. After all, the distinctive pattern of pits and serrated >>
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SUMMER 10
or “gimped” edging on what is otherwise either a simple, closed-lacing Oxford or open-lacing Derby style - also known as “Bluchers”, after Gebhard Leberecht von Blucher, the late 18th century Prussian fieldmarshall who popularised the pattern by ordering it for his troops - is a reminder of when the holes were punched right through the leather. Doing so in order to allow the insides to better dry out after they have undergone a good soaking (or to let the feet cool on a hot day) may be a blunt solution, but it gave rise to one of the most distinctive styles of shoe in the men’s wardrobe. It was Irish and Scottish agricultural workers, farming bogs and marshland, who first took an awl to their somewhat makeshift, heel-less
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I used to know this old guy and he’d say to me that his philosophy of shoes was that all a man needs is three pairs of brogues: one pair for the town, one pair for the country and one pair for the beach shoes - “brogue” or “brog” meaning “shoe” in Gaelic - albeit doing so in a decorative style that was typical of the more flamboyant men’s
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dress of the Elizabethan age. Even as the style became more recognisably like the brogue of today, tackling the elements remained a key
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issue, especially since early versions were made of leather shavings glued together - the resulting shoes were typically rubbed with candle wax to make them more water-repellent. It took some three centuries for the decoration to remain but the function to be lost and the modern notion of brogues to be established - albeit that their country roots remained, the sturdy style typically being worn by gamekeepers before being adopted by lairds and later gentlemen by the turn of the 20th century. At least some of the time. It was one of the strict rules of men’s dress etiquette that, in fact, brogues were only ever worn in the country, typically for country sports. It was the same association with the outdoors that led a studded variation of the brogue to be taken up as a golf shoe - although this came about by the smashing of yet another of the rules of dress by the Prince of Wales and future Edward VIII, a man whose royal influence during the 1920s in particular encouraged his radicalism to be adopted as the mainstream right across Europe. So mainstream, in fact, that the brogue came to practically define the image of the “proper” man’s shoe and the choice of the city gent. Indeed, although the brogue was first seen in black only in the 1920s - tradition dictating until this time that they should be brown in keeping with the country environment - this was just the first deviation on the path to the coloured and lightweight varieties now available. Two-tone versions, for example, helped to define the look of the jazz age. Jump forward 90 years, and shoe designer Rae Jones is winning a reputation with her take on the style for women, in summery shades of pale grey, soft pink and dusty blue. “Brogues somehow look tailored and neat but still have a casual air about them, which makes them versatile,” says Jones. “You can wear them with almost anything. You have to have a thinner sole and last shape for a women’s version to avoid looking too mannish. Flat lace-ups have been around for women since the 40s, of course, but brogues are a ‘new’ idea. Update them just slightly and they look remarkably modern. Keep them traditional and they’re simply classics.” n
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SAILING AWAY
While the super-wealthy enjoy their multi-million pound cruisers, opportunities are increasing for the rest of us to sail in style, as Chris Porter discovers BUSINESS QUARTER | SUMMER 10
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It would cost you £130,000 a week to charter Sir Philip Green’s Benetto Lionheart yacht on which the model Naomi Campbell was seen frolicking last summer. Beyonce and her husband Jay Z also took to the sea off the coast of Croatia, paying £119,000 a week. Likewise, the Formula 1 World Champion Jenson Button, actress Eva Longoria and the ubiquitous Katie Price (aka Jordan) were also snapped on the water. Small wonder then, with such high-profile figures spending their holidays afloat, that the yacht market is buoyant. Owning a mega-yacht may be an option only open to billionaire Russian oligarchs, who might perhaps consider the 80-metre Ocean Breeze, which is moored in Nice and is for sale complete with gold taps, pool table, steam room, surgery and sea-to-air missile system; one careful owner – Saddam Hussein.
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But such is typically beyond the pocket of even the very wealthy, though that has not prevented a rising interest in the attraction of smaller fish and increased demand in the pre-owned market. Cruisers, pleasure and motor boats are all increasing in popularity, and top-spec models, thanks to their manufacturers seeking to broaden their markets, are now being bought for as little as £10,000. The market is also drawing the attention of brand names historically outside the boating world and the Porsche Design Group recently announced a deal with the Singapore-based yacht builder Royal Falcon Fleet to design and market a new range of catamarans and super-yachts. The Monaco-based, if unfortunately named, boat maker Wally has also sparked renewed interest with a bold new aesthetic for its
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Motor-yachts are now appealing to a younger, more design-conscious consumer who may not have considered buying before
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yachts and smaller craft that – dark, foreboding and seriously streamlined – is more stealth than steerage. It is now also working with Hermes on some models. Another leading maker, Aeon, is cornering the eco market with yachts covered in solar panelling, engine systems that recycle waste and hulls sculpted to mimic a shark’s body for improved aqua-dynamics. Small wonder then that the big four of the cruiser and motorboat world – Riva, Sealine, Sunseeker and Fairline – have also upped the ante in terms of design, moving away from the traditional fixtures, classic lines and white hulls typical of such craft in favour of more striking style. Riva, for example, is best known for its hand-built wooden boats, suggestive of the suave playboy powering from party to party off the shores of Lake Como. >>
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Brigitte Bardot, Sean Connery, Richard Burton and Anita Ekberg were all Riva owners. It is an evocative, romantic image – but one which, since Riva has been working with part-fibreglass construction for 40 years, has long since been updated by more technically advanced boats. There is, for example, the electro-hydraulic board on the Sunriva model, which transforms bow sofa into sun deck, or the Venere’s Anti-Rolling Gyro, which actually eliminates rocking motion, thus helping to keep your Martini down. Sealine’s new F-series, similarly, has an internal layout that, radically in boat design, creates an open-plan area ideal for socialising, while its T60 Aura is a first for the motor yacht industry in being designed by the company in collaboration with Studio Conran under
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Sebastian Conran, son of the restaurateur and Habitat founder Terence. It has, as might be expected, a more contemporary interior than is typical of boats of this class, with blond wood, white leather and none of the standard beige vinyl or high-gloss cherry wood. The design reworks the layout to maximise a small space, following Studio Conran work for the Yotel hotel cabins concept and, prior to that, Concorde. So, motor-yachts are now appealing to a younger, more design-conscious consumer who may not have considered buying before, hence this is becoming an increasingly brand-oriented market. “The same loyalty to brands in motor boats is there now, as much as it is for cars,” argues Francesco Frediani, Riva’s vice president for
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sales and marketing. “Riva is often compared now to the likes of Rolls Royce, as other brands are compared to high-performance car brands. There are customers who don’t just want a motorboat, but a Riva – perhaps because they’ve seen one in the movies. Like many motor-yacht companies now, they have to be luxury brands for a luxury market.” But there is more to the growth in the motor-yacht market - growth which has bucked recessionary trends – than the application of style. Carsten Astheimer, Sealine’s head of design, suggests that new definitions of luxury favour emphasis less on what money can bring materially as what it can bring in terms of “wellness”. And being at sea, in greater contact with nature than city living typically affords, is a rare form of escape. Frediani agrees. “It is the dream of the motor boat that keeps demand for it alive,” he says. “Most of our clients are in business and lead busy working lives. Consequently, they place a lot of emphasis on their holiday time and expect it to be especially fulfilling. “Motor boats or yachts provide not only that experience of the outdoor life, but also offer a tranquil and private environment. It is a niche market of course, but more people are realising that, for perhaps the same money, a motor boat offers more than a sports car. A car will never provide the same sense of getting away from it all as a boat.” Among the highly commended models lately are the Fountain 48 Express Cruiser (around £500,000), the Chris Craft Corsair 28 (around £84,000) and, for the CEO in search of pure fun, the Ribcraft USA 210 RIB (Rigid Inflatable Boat) at around £45,000. And there is a huge range of possibilities. Experts recommend a boat of less than 50ft for anyone who does not intend to hire a crew. You should also consider that the cost does not stop with the purchase price. Fuel, insurance, maintenance and mooring all add up and are one reason why, for all that super-yachts make for headlines, smaller boats are more popular. The other key factor is the desired purpose, whether you are charting open seas or sailing more sheltered rivers and lakes, and the nature of your enjoyment. Day trips or longer
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Motor boats or yachts provide not only that experience of the outdoor life, but also offer a tranquil and private environment.
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holidays? Cruising in comfort or speeding through the waves? Most find that anything capable of 25 knots provides economy with more than enough excitement, with slower boats often safer and more stable. There are gizmos aplenty, but bow thrusters (on any boat over 40ft), echo sounder, chart plotter, radio communications and radar are genuine benefits worth the expenditure. A combination of factors will combine to make the ideal boat for each owner. It was, for example, less the air con, flat-screen TVs, laundry facilities or even the swanky galley as the superior handling, low sound levels, electronic steering and user-friendly systems monitoring that won Fairline the Motor Boat of the Year Award this year for its Squadron 55 model. But then it is £1.4m. Maybe it’s time to splash out? n
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ENTREPRENEUR
SUMMER 10
PINK DIFFERENT She gave up a successful business because she got bored with it. Now Cathy McConaghy sells sandwiches from a van. Peter Baber reports One day a few weeks ago a Kleeneze salesman was driving through a particularly leafy suburban street in Halifax when he spotted a vehicle he thought looked familiar. Not surprising really, as the vehicle in question was a bright pink Volkswagen camper van with the name “Lulabelle” delicately painted on the side. He remembered where he had seen it, and quickly went up to knock on the door of the house it was parked outside. A woman with a shock of bottle-blonde hair and sunglasses answered the door. “I am sorry,” he said, “I don’t normally knock, but I saw your van behind me the other day and I just wanted to say I think it’s great.” The woman quietly said thank-you, they talked a bit more, and then the man went on his way, no doubt pleased to have gone a little way out of his usual run of the day to give someone a compliment. What he wasn’t to know was that the woman he spoke to was Cathy McConaghy, once one of Harrogate’s – if not Yorkshire’s – best known exhibition organisers. And the reason she is now the proud owner of such a vehicle and was at home in the afternoon instead of being busy organising her next exhibition will be shocking to some, and all too typical to others, mainly depending on whether you are a man or a woman and a mother. What she has to say about her whole experience could also prove starkly interesting
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for anyone in the industry concerned. It is certainly shocking that the woman who ran more or less singlehandedly what at the time was the third-largest bridal fair in the UK can now say: “Weddings bore me. They are all the same.” Harrogate itself could probably lay claim to being wedding town of Britain. Europe’s biggest bridal trade show, the British Bridal Exhibition Harrogate (or BBEH as it is just as frequently known), takes place at the Harrogate International Centre, has done for several decades, and shows little sign of moving elsewhere. The show McConaghy launched and ran for 12 years – Yorkshire Brides – was seen very much as the consumer side of that. It’s to her credit that she could boast 85 per cent repeat bookings year-on-year as the show went on, but it is perhaps not surprising. The exhibitors
who would be unloading this season’s round of duchesse satin, organza drapes and pintuck bodices would be totally familiar with the town, and clearly love coming to such an elegant location. The success of the Yorkshire Brides show also prompted McConaghy, who had begun life as a wedding planner but quickly found event organising more interesting, to launch a quarterly magazine of the same name and an associated awards event. So what went wrong? What prompted her to change her mind? Why has she given up all the schmoozing that running an event like that necessarily entails, selling her beloved show to one of her own exhibitors, Amplitude? Why at the age of 38 has she embarked on a new venture in mobile office catering? She initially says nothing went wrong – she just grew tired of it. >>
Lots of people say: ‘I don’t know how you can work from home without spending all day watching television’. I actually feel guilty if I watch television
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ENTREPRENEUR
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ENTREPRENEUR “I did not have any interest in the industry any more,” she says. “I had been in it for 12 years. I was an exhibition organiser, so in the wedding industry, but at the same time not really in it.” She insists she made “good money” out of the exhibition. She won’t say how much, but it must have been good. The townhouses in the road she lives in sell for many hundreds of thousands. One other major influencing factor was the arrival four-and-a-half years ago of her daughter Tallulah. As a single mother, it would certainly have been hard to carry on a job like organising an exhibition – hard, or expensive, or quite possibly both. But like all good entrepreneurs, McConaghy says what has really driven her on has been the excitement of putting together her new venture. She had first thought of buying a camper van, originally just to go on holiday with, when she had been working out what to do next. “I started thinking that I wanted the camper van to make money,” she says, “and thought of one that I could hire out for holidays and festivals. “But then I came up with the idea of doing office lunches. I don’t have any catering
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I started thinking that I wanted the camper van to make money and I thought of one that I could hire out for holidays and festivals. But then I came up with the idea of doing office lunches
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qualifications, but I have always loved cooking and food. When I was working for six months on the handover of the exhibition they had a guy who came round in a van with lunches. That was great because it was in the middle of nowhere. But it was always pasties and the like. I thought I would pay double if he could bring me a really nice salad or a nice soup.” We should point out that this is no ordinary camper van. Just as its pink colour and decoration were all her own idea, she has given a lot of thought into creating something special. “It took me a long time to find the van I wanted,” she says. “I finally found a guy in Bedford who had it. It was originally a 1959 German fire engine, and then it went to Los Angeles to a collector’s museum, and then it went to Bedford. We brought it up in February, and stripped out all its original fittings, and built the kitchen.” Added to that, alongside the sandwiches, soups and salads she sells, she has specially created packets of sweets and other snacks in a design that is redolent of the early 1960s when this van was first in use, when people still went for their summer holidays to Filey and probably spent a good deal of the time huddled around just such a van. She says business so far has been good. She is already making a profit in only her fourth week of operations, and has so far only been going to the more modest sized office developments in Harrogate. She hasn’t yet ventured to bigger spaces such as Cardale Park. And then there are weekend festivals to look forward to as well. “I am not doing any of the big ones this year,” she says. “But I am doing the Halifax and Swinton Park Fine Food Festivals. I am hoping to do the Lyme Tree Festival in July too, and a couple of Volkswagen enthusiasts’ festivals, including one at Harewood, one in North Yorkshire and one in Cheshire.” It is clearly early days, but yes, she has thought about franchising such an operation as well. “I would obviously like to grow the business,” she says, “and it probably will be franchising, but I don’t quite know how the concept would work because it is a big investment. It has cost me in the region of £25,000 to set the van up, and sourcing the camper van took months. If I
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franchised it out it would have to be with a similar van. Vans like the one I have got are really quite rare, they are not your average Volkswagen campers. When they were originally built they were built as a van, and were then converted to campers. You could convert a camper back to a van, but it is a big investment.” So for the time being she is working on her own – something that is not particularly novel to her, as outside of the actual exhibition days on Yorkshire Brides the only full-time person she employed was a writer to help her on the magazine. But it is a punishing schedule, as she herself admits. “This is harder,” she says, “because after each show I could take quite a long time off before the next show and work part-time. But this is 6am to 2.30pm every day, and then prep at weekends.
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“At six o’clock there’s a very strong coffee or two. I clean down the kitchen, get it ready and bring in the stock. At the moment I am making nearly 50 sandwiches, five litres of soup, a cake, and a tray bake. I set off at 7.30am with Tallulah in tow, go to the bakers and butchers, drop Tallulah off at nursery and start prepping. It all has to be done for about 11. Then I have another coffee, load the van up and set off for 11.40am.” It’s when you ask her whether she doesn’t ever have even the slightest inkling to go back, however, that more comes out about what she has left behind. I point out, for example, that the new job still means working to tight deadlines. “I can work to deadlines, I really can,” she says. “On Monday night I was at a party and got in at 2am, but I still managed to get up at 6am to do the job. If it has to be done it has
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to be done. Lots of people say: ‘I don’t know how you can work from home and get motivation without spending all day watching television’. I actually feel guilty if I watch television. I am quite happy to get up even if I hate early mornings. It drives me to generate more and more business. No, I can work to deadlines. But nobody else around me seems to be able to.” And so out come some of major frustrations of the old job. The conference and events industry in Yorkshire may like to think it is dynamic and responsive, but McConaghy suggests some of the businesses that feed into it still have some way to go. “I would come up with really good PR and marketing ideas,” she says, “and no one would get behind them. For instance, when we started the magazine my marketing idea was to have everything locally sourced and >>
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ENTREPRENEUR
eco-friendly. So we would send out challenges to tiara designers to come up with a design that was eco-friendly and that hadn’t had diamonds flown in from everywhere. But nobody would get involved. “I also remember sending a flier out to all the hotels, saying if you can design a wedding menu to a certain brief, the best one will get a free double page spread advert. Not one of them sent one in. I understand they were probably busy, but I would have bitten somebody’s hand off for some free publicity.” She even notices a similar apathy now among the event organisers she rings to book a space for the van. “It amazes me that so many organisers I have contacted haven’t rung back,” she says. “When I was organising if I got an enquiry my pack was out in first class post that day and I did a follow-up call within a week.” The new job, by contrast, is down to her and her only. She doesn’t even have to worry about PR, she says, because, as she discovered
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I understand they were probably busy, but I would have bitten somebody’s hand off for some free publicity. If I got an enquiry my pack was out first class post that day
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with the Kleeneze man, the van does that for her. “It used to drive me crackers that half my life was chasing other people,” she says. “Now I am responsible for making these sandwiches, and if someone wants to come out and buy one thank you very much, if not that’s fine. “The first week I did I finished work and thought, it’s only 1.30pm, everyone is still at work, what can I do?” In actual fact she spends a couple of hours recuperating. “But it’s a much better quality of life,” she says. “You can’t do it all, so for me I have the perfect balance. I have my daughter. She is at full-time nursery, but I don’t have to farm her out anywhere. “We do the festivals at the weekends together. She loves the camper van. Everybody flashes and waves at us, and then I am working with something that I enjoy – food – and I am at home.” It does sound tempting. n
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INTERVIEW
SUMMER 10
LIQUID ASSETS
Our most familiar natural resource coupled with 2,000-year-old technology represents the future of energy production. Peter Baber investigates hydro power – driven by social enterprise.
If there is one symbol of just how changeable the whole business of “going green” can be, it’s those sinister white things you see churning around on the horizon if you go walking in the Pennines. Yes, wind turbines. Not more than ten years ago they were seen as more or less the saviours of planet Earth, a noiseless way of making copious amounts of renewable energy that was ideally suited to the island of Britain. Not any more. There are now just as many people who say they are a blight on the horizon, don’t actually produce much energy, and do, in fact, make a noise. Any application
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to build a wind farm these days usually ends up inciting as many vociferous opponents as enthusiasts. Ah well. But now we’re up here, take a look around. There is another equally omnipresent feature of the Pennine landscape that some people right here in Yorkshire are now thinking could be adapted to produce energy at relatively little cost, and with no blight on the landscape. It could also be done without using untested new technology – using apparatus, in fact, that has been around for many centuries. We are talking about water – running water.
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Hydro electric power is normally something you learn about in school geography lessons, when you get to hear about the mighty Hoover Dam or some project in Canada where they have literally moved a mountain or something to get raging torrents down a channel. What we are talking about here is something of a much smaller scale, although it does use similar technology. On just about every river in the north of England and even further afield you will find a weir that was at one time in the past used to generated power. The Environment Agency believes there are in total about 25,000 of them. Steve Welsh, director of Water Power Enterprises, is perfectly right to describe the landscape of much of the Pennines as “industrial”. You may think it’s romantic moors and heather, but you never have to look very far when you get up here before you find some kind of evidence of former industrial use, and these weirs are a good example of that. The social enterprise Welsh has set up will hopefully restore many of these weirs to working order and produce power for the local community using the simplest of processes. Water is taken out of the river at the top of the weir, fed down what is known
as an Archimedean screw, and then let back into the river again. The Archimedean screw drives a turbine which then generates the power. The H2OPE project that Water Power Enterprises is running has already worked with two community groups to get what Welsh terms “community hydros” up and running outside Settle and at New Mills in Cheshire. He is currently working on one project in Bainbridge in North Yorkshire and two in Stockport. Next year they plan to open five, while six are planned to open in 2012. “There is no way all those 25,000 will be usable,” he says. “There’s the state of weir to consider and access to site and, of course, getting planning permission. But we have around 100 sites on our books at early stages of development. We used to use a map to spot them, but we are now working instead with community groups. “We have so far done workshops with 250 people from 85 community groups around the country to go through whole process of getting one built.” The community hydro set-up would have been perfectly familiar to local communities in the north of England in days gone by, he says. How does he know this? He has met a few
After the war the electricity industry was nationalised and, with loads of taxpayers’ money going into the National Grid, pylons started going up. The electricity they produced was cheaper, so little by little the villages abandoned their hydro sites.
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INTERVIEW
people who used to work for such power projects in the past. “At the Bainbridge site there was a man we met called Peter Leyland, who has in fact just died,” he says. “But he used to go around collecting money from people who used to buy power off the old hydro scheme. He remembered being sent down when people complained of their lights dimming to remove the leaves from the weir.” Yes, by the very fact that hydros rely on nature, the power they produce is not totally reliable. And that is probably what did for the old hydros when the National Grid came along after the Second World War. “We are still coming across sites that were decommissioned in the 1950s,” says Welsh. “After the war the electricity industry was nationalised and, with loads of taxpayers’ money going into the National Grid, pylons started going up. The electricity they produced was cheaper, so little by little the villages abandoned their hydro sites.” Now, however, thinking has changed, and, in a bid to encourage carbon reduction and energy efficiency, both the previous government and the new one have been encouraging people to set up smaller networks, which Welsh claims his schemes are a great example of. The hydros do not directly power local houses. Partly because of unreliability, and partly because of expense, the power they produce goes to the nearest electricity substation, although Welsh claims that from that the physics of electricity is such that the energy created by the weir is still being used to power local houses from that substation. And it is residential properties that so far stand most to benefit, with one notable exception. “A wire directly connects our hydro at New Mills to the local Co-op,” he says. “It is one of their really big stores, and we supply about 70 per cent of their needs.” The Co-operative Group is actually one of H2OPE’s backers, along with the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust and the Key Fund for Yorkshire. The Yorkshire Dales National >>
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On top of that, the Archimedean screw is 2,000-year-old technology; river weirs are sometimes 250 years old, and the legal structure of industrial provident society is 150 years old
Park Trust has also funded the Bainbridge scheme to the tune of £50,000. Although he says he prefers to run community enterprises from “ideological conviction”, Welsh says he has chosen to go down the social enterprise route partly to ensure the project gets funding from these kind of grant bodies. He says: “Also the scale we are looking at with these hydros – from 10kW to 150 kW – the private sector is not really interested.” That, however, is starting to change, as more private enterprises become aware of the advantages to be reaped from new Government incentives to encourage more people to introduce renewable energy schemes by paying them for any surplus energy they provide to the grid. This system, previously administered through Renewables Obligation Certificates, or ROCs, was considerably strengthened last year and renamed as Feed-In Tariffs (FITs), and Welsh says the extra drive FITs have given to the project has been considerable. “All new schemes from July last year eligible for FITs,” he says, “and they have been increasing revenue by 30 per cent, making many schemes far more viable.” While there may be as yet no private enterprises involved, there certainly are private individuals. H2OPE’s model involves financing
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each scheme with what is termed a share offer. Although such offers have to be sanctioned by the FSA, they are not share offers of the kind that anyone familiar with the London Stock Exchange would know about. Set up under industrial provident society rules – roughly the same rules that set up the Co-op – you can apply for shares in a scheme on the basis of one member one vote, so it doesn’t really matter how much you put in, you get the same voting power. You can invest anything from £250 to £20,000, although Welsh says the bottom limit may be revised downwards as a result of the recession. Then, each year each shareholder gets what is termed an interest payment once overheads such as insurance and maintenance have been accounted for. Welsh says these interest payments have a certain advantage over traditional dividends as they are handed out before tax is levied on them, making them a very tax efficient way of investing. You can’t trade the shares, however, and although you technically can sell them back after three years, you can only do so with the agreement of the community hydro itself, and even then you will only get back what you paid. So, although the scheme has proved popular with local people wanting to put some money away ethically – Welsh claims they are currently getting one person applying
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for shares for every four prospectuses downloaded from the website – he thinks in the long term it is more likely that ethical investment funds will be the majority shareholders. Some of them have already been acting as underwriters for the share offers. In fact, setting up such a hydro scheme is more complicated than it looks, which is why it is not surprising to hear about larger and more commercial organisations getting involved. For one thing, there are all the legal issues to consider. “That’s where all the fun starts,” says Welsh. The schemes need planning permission, even though in many cases the structure itself is already there. They need an abstraction licence from the Environment Agency – something that was designed for farmers and industries for removing water from rivers – and still applies to hydros, even if they put back all the water they take out. And you need to document the impact any such scheme is likely to have on all manner of wildlife. “There are white-clawed crayfish, he says. “They are a highly protected species. And bats. And of course the fish themselves.” Although it has been proven that fish can survive swimming down an Archimedean screw, permission will often only be granted if the scheme includes a fish ladder – a structure that allows the fish to swim over the weir (provided, of course, that it knows it is there). The cost of employing consultants to work up such reports can be prohibitive, as much as £30,000 with no guarantee you will get planning permission at the end. That is one the reasons why Welsh has come across many community groups who have been trying to implement such schemes for five years and have got nowhere. H2OPE aims for a time limit of two years, but even still, he says, you are lucky to find a grant body that would be willing to fund such a risk. There is risk to Welsh’s enterprise itself, too. Water Power Enterprises hasn’t so far owned any of the schemes it had advised on. They have all been owned by the community, and Water Power Enterprises gets paid by the
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shareholders once the project is complete. But that can mean many years before payment. So in the future Welsh may look at some form of part ownership instead. But he says the overall possibilities the hydro schemes have to offer make the risk worth it. “We are now entering worlds that are very uncertain politically and economically,” he says. “So it makes sense to take hold of what you’ve got. If the community is owning energy assets, that could be some leverage. Because if Mr Putin can stop energy supplies to Ukraine,
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what can you do? On top of that, the Archimedean screw is 2,000 year-old technology; river weirs are sometimes 250 years old, and the legal structure of industrial provident society is 150 years old. We are not using anything new, we are reusing what’s gone before. It’s far less threatening to the local communities than wind farms.” You can sense hear that he is gearing up for the end of what he calls the “honeymoon” period, a time when the schemes he is proposing may come under attack in just the
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same way as windfarms have done. Potential opponents could include anglers, even though with every scheme H2OPE has to prove that fish will not be harmed. He is ready. But, as it happens, he supports wind farms too. He says he doesn’t believe claims written about them in the press being white elephants, partly because he has his own wind turbine on the ten-acre farm he owns above Todmorden. He is so convinced about its potential to make him money in the future that he no longer has a pension. n
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RISING STAR IN CONTROL
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Vicky Godliman has won a major Yorkshire finance business award. Unlikely candidate, said some. Perfect choice, writes Peter Baber What’s your impression of your finance team at work? Not a very positive one, perhaps? People you have little to do with, outside of the Christmas party, and who you assume spend all their days in darkened corners slaving over numbers and rarely venturing out? If that’s your impression, you could be in for a surprise. Finance departments are going through something of a revolution these days with finance directors in particular expected to be much more up front and willing to engage with customers and potential investors. This was the case even before the credit crunch, particularly if your business was backed by a private equity investor. But clearly since the credit crunch finance directors need to be even more proactive. Banks and other lenders are that much more cautious about
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what and who they invest in, and want to make sure the companies they choose do have at least one person on the board who has their finger on the financial pulse. Hence the need for finance directors to make themselves visible. And if they are doing that, they themselves need to be convinced that their number two – their financial controller – is back in the office making sure that everything is in order and is ticking over nicely in a financial sense. Paul Ferguson, finance director of York-based Trustmarque, certainly knows the importance of this issue. The £120m software licence provider which has recently moved into consultancy, went through a management buyout in 2006 at a time when for a lengthy spell he had been the only fully qualified accountant in a team of 11. “LDC, who were the investors, saw the vulnerability there was if something happened to me,” he says. “Bringing on a proper financial controller was seen as a major priority.” The reason this is significant is that in May this year the person Trustmarque chose to help Paul Ferguson out, Vicky Godliman, won >>
Vicky won the award because rather than being the standard financial controller who looks after the day-to-day, she sees the whole picture Proactive: TESG is outperforming business predictions.
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the overall award at the inaugural Yorkshire Rising Star Awards, which specifically aim to recognise second-in-commands within Yorkshire businesses’ finance teams. Quite apart from rewarding them for their own performance, the idea is that these people could very well be the major players of tomorrow. Or at least that’s what the awards sponsors, recruitment consultancy the Sharp Consultancy, Grant Thornton and law firm Cobbetts, think. At 38, Godliman has every prospect of proving them right. “Vicky won the award because rather than being the standard financial controller who looks after the day-to-day she sees the whole picture,” says Ferguson, who nominated her. And yet, in some ways she was a most unlikely candidate to win such an award. Because, as she herself admits, before she came to Trustmarque in 2006 she had never really led a large team in the way she does now. After working as an auditor for
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Major players: left to right, Scott Haddow, Vicky Godliman, Paul Ferguson, Mark Godliman
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PricewaterhouseCoopers, Garbutt & Elliott and Ernst & Young for the best part of a decade, interrupted only by a stretch of internal audit at VP in Harrogate which she says she didn’t like, she did go on to launch a company with a colleague that sold Sage software to small businesses. But that only employed consultants who billed clients separately. And even when after five years of doing that she was approached by a renewable energy firm that wanted her to be its financial controller, she still wasn’t managing a large group of people like the 13 who are currently in Trustmarque’s department. Godliman says: “When I went for the interview for this award, Lee Sweeney, one of the directors at Sharp, said: ‘Paul, no disrespect, but it was a bit of a punt taking Vicky on. She hadn’t worked in a company that size’. But Paul said I had had experience of running my own business and it was that side of it he didn’t have.”
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We are now moving with our customers to have more technology conversations. So we can sweat our assets more
And indeed she has, and it is that side of her character which really marks her out, and certainly makes her more like an entrepreneur. Godliman has really seen the world. She didn’t like the VP job because it didn’t involve going out to meet customers, which is something she enjoys doing, she says. And when she took the bold step of leaving E&Y to set up on her own she was perfectly aware that the job she was taking on involved selling, something she had patently no experience of doing. But she still went out and did it. “I am not a salesperson and found that part of the job very hard,” she says. “But fortunately it was what the customers got afterwards that sold the product to them.” One suspects she is being particularly modest here. Ferguson says one of her particular strengths is the ability to understand the situation the customer is in and adapt accordingly. “We have been over the £100m turnover mark for the past four or five years,” he says. “We are a reseller, a high-volume, low-margin reseller, with around 13,500 orders a year. It is vital that we have complete control over those orders, and vital that we invoice them rightly. One side of Vicky’s job is control, but the other element is value-added. So when customers want something out of the ordinary we don’t just say: ‘We don’t do that’. “Take credit limits for a new customer who might not have insurance, for example. In many companies the finance team would probably just say no. Instead Vicky says: ‘What can we do here that will help the customer but still protect the finance of the company?’” Godliman does admit she has introduced new thinking into the finance team. She says: “What we want to avoid is any kind
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of a silo mentality – the idea that the purchase ledger team pay bills, the sales ledger team get the money in and never the twain shall meet. We have been trying to show purchase ledger that it is not always the right thing to make the payments and make your ledger nil, because we like to save the cash and negotiate more favourable terms with the suppliers. “They don’t need payment in 30 days, we can stretch to 45 or 60. Then we are also working with sales ledgers, so you wouldn’t pay the supplier without checking first that the customer is happy, or you don’t have any bridge.”
The launch of TESG, the new consultancy business, which Ferguson commends Godliman for “single-handedly taking control of” also brought its challenges. Trustmarque’s chief executive Scott Haddow says TESG is all about the need to have more conversations with clients. “A traditional licensing business is relatively transactional,” he says. “We are now moving with our customers to have more technology conversations. So we can sweat our assets more.” Using terminology which seems to have peculiarly infected the IT world, he says the new move is all about shifting Trustmarque from being a LAR (large account reseller) to VAR (value added reseller). Yet conversations with clients imply a certain amount of quid pro quo, and the accounts department has a bearing there. Transactional businesses are relatively easy to finance, conversational ones less so. Godliman explains: “We did do some consultancy work before, but didn’t formalise it. Now we need to make sure we are invoicing the client when we should, once milestones >>
RISING STARS: The winners in full Yorkshire under £25m turnover: Andrew Ward, Zubrance Yorkshire £25m-£70m turnover: Andrew Mill, Lexia Solutions Group South Yorkshire £25m-£70m turnover: Gary Vaughton, ESG Holdings Yorkshire £70m-£150m turnover: Vicky Godliman, Trustmarque South Yorkshire £70m- £150m turnover: Jon Furniss, Tunstall Healthcare Yorkshire over £150m turnover: Monica Turner, ASDA South Yorkshire over £150m turnover: James Hart, Firth Rixson Yorkshire Public Sector/Not for Profit: Andrew Eckford, Sheffield Hallam University Overall Yorkshire Rising Star: Vicky Godliman, Trustmarque
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are signed off. That’s key to us. We don’t invoice a client for 50 days’ consultancy when they haven’t had one day. Historically we might have done that because we didn’t put enough attention to it.” TESG has in fact, outperformed what Trustmarque thought it would do in year one, and Ferguson for one is particularly satisfied. “Vicky has been actually making sure we only use partners in this who are solid,” he says. “If we use a third party who let us down, not only does that cause damage to our reputation, we also get liability.” Haddow is certainly very impressed with Godliman’s performance. He says: “Vicky was involved in all aspects of planning last year when we went through a huge state of flux.” That could be something of an understatement. There was much speculation about the company in 2008 when Ross Miller, who had been chief executive since 2001 and led the management buyout in 2006 which brought LDC on board, suddenly stepped down. The departure of a chief executive from a private equity-backed company when there has been no secondary buyout is enough of a rarity to cause comment, and the talk was that the company had failed to meet targets that LDC had set. Such rumours were only reinforced by sales director Ursula Cook moving onto pastures new at around the same time. Haddow, a former regional director for Computacenter who was brought in after the company was led for a short caretaker spell by Ken Hills, insists that there was no issue on profitability at the time. Profits dipped slightly last year, but the company still made £3.9m. “But we did take a large bit out of that for restructuring and so on,” he says, “and
Paul said I’d had the experience of running my own business and it was that side of it he didn’t have
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developing a fresh new strategy. Everyone felt it was time for a change.” The result of that was TESG. There is another challenge Godliman has had to face – on a more personal level. She happens to be married to Mark Godliman, the company’s chief operating officer. She met her husband ten years ago when he was a project manager at Trustmarque and she was working for VP. He encouraged her to go for the finance controller job, although he himself was not involved in the interviewing. Such appointments are bound to raise eyebrows, but in fact Vicky says there was much less hostility to the idea among her team than she had first imagined. She says: “I had more issues about being married to someone in the company than anyone else.” Vicky admits she rarely sees her husband in the office. In fact, one of the initiatives Haddow has introduced since he became chief executive is making the senior management team sit together in the same office. And she and Mark have a rule about not discussing work at home. “Some days we arrive in the car and I don’t see Mark until we leave at 6.30pm,” she says. “And anything we have to say is pretty much done and dusted by the time we get home,” says Mark. Ferguson has no hang-ups about appointing a colleague’s wife to the role. “Being married to someone in the company is actually a plus point,” he says, “because however good a CV looks, you still have that question mark about characters.” And as for when they are not at work, the relationship is clearly proving beneficial. The couple met each other at a riding stables, and are very keen event riders. “Vicky is Grade 2, I am Grade 3,” says Mark. To put that into context, people who ride in the Badminton Horse Trials, the most famous event, are probably about Grade 5. Mark says the two of them are very competitive, although they don’t compete against each other. “We are competitive, whether that be on a Saturday morning having had to get up at 4.45am to drive to the event, or driving the business forward.” It certainly seems to be paying dividends. n
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SOWING THE SEED
As one business funding source replaces another, Peter Baber talks to those most closely involved about where support is most needed
It’s public funding, Jim, but not as we know it. At the end of last month the new £90m fund that will be largely responsible for doling out public money to growing Yorkshire businesses moved into new offices just next to Business Link Yorkshire, an organisation which has itself only recently gone through a massive restructuring. From a building in a business park still getting used to its soft landscaping, Finance Yorkshire will be doling out the cash, potentially to the very same people who may be coming through the doors at Business Link. In fact, Finance Yorkshire’s chairman James Newman says the location is partly intentional because he wants the new organisation to work with Business Link and other regional business support organisations much more closely than its forebears may have done in the past. “We have learned lots of issues this time around,” says Newman, a veteran on the Yorkshire business scene who is currently a non-executive director on two AIM-listed companies, Straight and Brulines, and has just stepped down from the board of Infoserve. “We are located above Business Link and have strong connections with Connect Yorkshire.
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We will try to be a lot more conversant with Yorkshire Association of Business Angels (YABA). We will do more co-funding, and could be involved in bigger deals than we have been before.” It all sounds very promising. The fund is being provided in part by Yorkshire Forward and in part by the European Investment Bank (EIB) and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF). The changes have come about partly because of a change in way the EU looks at business funding, and also because the old-style funds operating in Yorkshire have now reached the end of their investment period, although both still have three years to go as portfolio funds before they are wound up completely. The £90m is actually being split into three different new funds, managed by three different fund managers. A Seedcorn Finance Fund, able to grant amounts of between £15,000 and £780,000 is managed by Enterprise Ventures. There’s an Equity Linked Finance Fund for investments of between £100,000 and £2m, managed by North Star Equity, and finally a Loans Fund for amounts of between £15,000 and £150,000. This last is managed by an organisation called FSY which may be new but it is in fact made up of staff from the old South Yorkshire Investment Fund (SYIF), led by Tony Goulbourn, which Finance Yorkshire has effectively replaced. Of course, using public money to finance private sector businesses will always be a slightly contentious issue. It’s no wonder that those still in charge of the old funds are keen to tell you just how much of the public money has been paid back (see panel), or that those behind the new venture quickly go on the defensive. Both Newman and Goulbourn are quick to insist business growth, not aid, is what the issue is here.
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“We are not providing cash for survival,” says Newman. Goulbourn goes further. “The key thing is that when we make judgements about who we lend to we still have to do so on sound commercial principles,” he says, “and I don’t care if that makes me sound like a typical fund manager. We are not there to try to prop up businesses that are failing, so you need to work out what to avoid.” So what changes can business hoping to get funding expect? The most obvious change is that the new fund covers the whole of Yorkshire and North Lincolnshire – essentially the whole area covered by Yorkshire Forward. The two funds Finance Yorkshire is replacing – SYIF and Partnership Investment Finance (PIF) – had a much more complicated geography. SYIF was a fund covering the old Objective 1 area in Yorkshire, which meant South Yorkshire only. PIF was covering Objective 2 areas, which were less easy to define. Some parts of the region were covered, others were not. It was a dicey situation if, for example, you happened to be a business located in the West Yorkshire village of Outlane. Parts of it are in Kirklees which was in the Objective 2 area and so would qualify, but other parts are in Calderdale, which is not and would not. And if you were choosing to locate further north in Yorkshire, it might have been wise to choose Thirsk, which was just in the Objective 2 area, rather than neighbouring Northallerton, which was just out of it. Such idiosyncrasies have been ironed out in the new-look fund, although Goulbourn isn’t sure that’s necessarily all good news. The two old funds together, he says, amounted to £87m (£50m for SYIF and £37m for PIF). The new fund is worth only £3m more. He says: “In a sense we are more limited >>
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The key thing is that when we make judgements about who we lend to we still have to do so on sound commercial principles
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Business growth: Finance Yorkshire chairman James Newman because we are having to spread ourselves even more in terms of geography. Jonathan Dixon, Finance Yorkshire’s acting chief executive, is more diplomatic, pointing out that in initial talks with the EU, a sum of
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£120m had been mooted, which was subsequently whittled down. “We would love to have had more,” he says, “but a report PricewaterhouseCoopers wrote for us suggested £90m is by no means bad.”
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Other idiosyncrasies that are staying are the sectors Finance Yorkshire is not allowed to invest in. Just as under the old system, these include retail, construction, and any other industries that already have specific Government support such as agriculture, coal and steel. Investments are also barred to companies involved in tobacco, alcohol and negative medical effects. Some of those may seem surprising, particularly the bar on retail. Goulbourn says: “The idea was that by offering support to retailer A you were putting off retailer B.” You could say that might apply to any business. But he says in any case these barriers were sometimes possible to work around – a fact that becomes clear when you discover that one of PIF’s investee companies was Leeds Brewery, an alcohol supplier which owns two pubs in Leeds, although the investment only covered the brewery part of the business. Another new part of the deal is the Seedcorn Fund. Goulbourn has long been actively campaigning for such a fund to exist in Yorkshire, as they have already existed in other parts of the north for many years. He actually had one set up, also managed by Enterprise Ventures, under the auspices of SYIF. But this new fund is of a much bigger order. Jonathan Diggines, managing director of Enterprise Ventures, says Yorkshire businesses probably still have to get used to the idea of a fund for companies that have yet to exist. “It’s not like the Merseyside Investment Fund,” he says, “which has been running for years and which SYIF to a certain extent was modelled on.” The fund should be easier to apply to than before, he says, because whereas in days past anyone applying for other seedcorn funds would usually need to have match funding from somewhere else, this fund is “prematched”. Because the European Investment Bank raises its funds on the capital markets, it is classed as a private sector investor, even if it is underwritten by national governments. So, the need for there to be public and private funding for a new venture is met. All you need, he says, is a business plan, and it doesn’t even need to be complete. But he says the reasons why Yorkshire needs such a fund are all too clear. >>
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“The most important thing is that it should be something that is patentable in IP terms,” says Diggines. “The rest we can work on.” He says he still prefers “rifle shot” approach of only picking certain winners to the “spray and pray” policy many early seedcorn funds adopted where they would essentially give money to anything. But he believes the need for such a fund at the moment is overwhelming. “If you look at BVCA statistics on the returns in the early years private sector funds who do start-ups are getting,” he says, “you can see why so few people are doing them. And yet the banks are currently only interested in doing bigger buyouts. In Yorkshire we do not really have an investor culture, but we need one. These funds are vital not just because of the companies we are investing in, but also for the culture we need to encourage.” A similar thought is echoed by Newman. “Finance Yorkshire is even more important now in the current situation,” he says. “Banks are far more choosy about who they lend to, and we have to plug that gap.” So is the course set and the weather fair? Well, not quite. The fund managers may have been appointed and the offices filled, but so far no money has been passed on to anyone. Why not? Because Finance Yorkshire hasn’t officially launched yet; the signature is still needed before the £90m is released. Goulbourn and Diggines say this is becoming an issue because they have deals waiting. “We have £1m already waiting to be signed off,” says Goulbourn, “and businesses cannot wait.” Dixon admits he was expecting the agreement to have been signed off by now, but says the election and change of government has put another hurdle in what have already been protracted negotiations about future funding. The negotiations took so long, in fact, that Yorkshire Forward had to step in to provide PIF and SYIF with an extra £5m each to tide them over when their official term of operation ended before agreement was reached. He insists that the new ministers are only looking over the agreement again – something he says they are right to do – and that there is no chance they would suddenly scrap the whole scheme.
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“We are encouraged by comments made recently by Mark Prisk, the minister for small business in favour of a similar fund in the North West,” he says. “We have shown these comments to the EIB, and they are reassured.”
He is confident the scheme will be given the go-ahead in July. One side issue of the delay, however, is that he can carry on acting. Until the deal is signed, Finance Yorkshire will not have a permanent chief executive. n
The legacy What of SYIF and PIF – the older legacies? What success stories have they created in the Yorkshire business world? And have they achieved the original desire when they were created of at least not losing their investors any money? On this second point, those associated with both the funds say it depends on whether you are talking about equity or debt investors. With equity it is too early to say, because it still depends on exits the funds are due to make on remaining businesses in their portfolio before they are wound up in three years. “There are 30 prospects on the SYIF portfolio,” says Tony Goulbourn, “and a good many of those I am sure will make good exits.” But both funds are adamant that all public and private sector loans have been paid back, such as the full amount from Barclay’s paid back 18 months before the fund closed. As for the companies helped along the way, the most often quoted examples are, for SYIF, Pressure Technologies, a gas cylinder manufacturer, even if its old name Chesterfield Cylinders indicates that it wasn’t founded in Yorkshire. It only moved north to Sheffield in 2004 when SYIF backed a management buyout with an equity investment. Gouldbourn says: “At the stage we came in the bank had already put a lot of money into the business, it wasn’t profitable enough to attract debt funding and wasn’t sexy enough to get private equity interested.” It has since floated successfully on AIM, producing a good return for SYIF. As for businesses SYIF loaned money to, Goulbourn picks out Hydra Mining Tools, strictly speaking the world’s oldest shearer drum manufacturer. Certainly its chief executive Gordon McShannon says SYIF helped it transform itself from being a moribund company, 80 per cent of whose sales went to the declining UK market to being 80 per cent focused on exports, even selling to China. “Our business is strengthened,” he says, “so if we now ever had to come to Finance Yorkshire to get funding again it would be all right.” An equivalent success to Pressure Technologies for PIF might be Leeds-based railway software company Tracsis, which after an initial PIF investment has also floated on AIM. But Julia Chapman, the sole remaining executive at PIF, says there are plenty of other smaller success stories. “There’s Leeds Brewery which now has 41 employees,” she says, “and Trio Healthcare, a Skipton-based provider of silicone-based medical devices, whose turnover has increased dramatically since we invested. Our failure rate has probably been comparable with any other kind of fund.” And certainly one business director who had benefited from PIF but didn’t want to be named was impressed, saying fund managers at PIF, unlike some other public sector bodies, had a real “grasp of business”. But not everyone is so satisfied. Tim Bennett, managing director of ID-Wall, a £200,000 turnover Huddersfield technology company, managed to get a PIF loan of £50,000 four years ago without first trying anywhere else. He says he probably could have done just as well without it. Although the main reason for this is because what he was advised to spend the money on – visiting trade shows – he no longer thinks is a particularly lucrative way of doing marketing, there were also problems about the terms of the loan. “It proved very expensive in terms of interest repayments,” he says. “Now in a downturn we are still having to pay for something we took out four years ago.”
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SUMMER 10
A BIT OF A CHAT
>> The digital divide
with Frank Tock >> Blighty’s oldest ally… The oft-quoted claim about Portugal being Britain’s oldest ally and much more Anglophile than Spain certainly seemed to hold water on my two trips down to the Iberian peninsula this spring. The Leeds in Barcelona extravaganza included a bloggers evening where we were told all sorts of happening young things from Catalan society would be present. So, aside from reporting, I thought I would do my bit for the home side and quiz them on their knowledge of Yorkshire. Unfortunately this largely came down to: “Yarkshi? Errr – where eez that?” So I tried a broader approach. “Do you like English books?” “Boox? Ah, si, si, love English books.” “Which ones in particular?” “Err, err, Wuthering Heights.” And thereby is revealed an awful lot about the need for such cultural exchanges. Contrast that with another trip I made, this time with the family, to Portugal’s Algarve just a couple of weeks later. On discovering that we were from Leeds – a fact emblazoned by the “Leeds Live It Love It” bag the good lady wife was sporting – the maitre d’ of a restaurant we visited subjected my 11-year-old son to a lengthy monologue about Leeds United’s chances of promotion at the end of the season. It was surprisingly well informed for someone from Carvoeiro. So just imagine his disappointment when he discovered that the lad supported neither Leeds nor Huddersfield Town (where we said we were from) – but Barcelona!
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Talking of football, shocking news comes to us courtesy of PricewaterhouseCoopers which suggests that only seven per cent of people in Yorkshire will watch the World Cup online, compared with 14 per cent of Londoners. This figure gets even worse when people are asked about the 2018 World Cup, which apparently only 11 per cent of Yorkshire folk intend to watch online compared with 20 per cent of Londoners. This, apparently, is a sign of the digital divide that makes Yorkshire a worse place to be because we are not as savvy with our internet use or as well connected. I hate to disagree with as august a body as PWC, but might I be so bold? Is it not instead a sign of how much more sociable we Yorkshire people are? We prefer to watch big sporting events like the World Cup with our friends, perhaps even in a pub overlooking the great scenery we have around here, rather than stuck on our own hovering over a PC screen in some squalid bedsit in London. After all, if we want to go online, we know we can. Weren’t we told a few years ago that Yorkshire had become the first region in the country to be 100 per cent broadband connected? Or did such figures assume London wasn’t a region?
The evening also included the Model Employee (natch!) awards, and winner of the Director of the Year award there was our very own Doug Baird, who we interviewed in the last issue. Well done to him. We have certainly noticed a big increase in the number of these charity catwalks. They are doubtless a good way to raise money – and, we would imagine, to massage a fair few egos along the way.
>> Rocking all over the world from leeds Much has been made about Status Quo frontman Francis Rossi becoming chairman of a 200-year-old whisky brand, Glen Rossie. (I did think, given his past chart history, that Margaritas might have been more his thing, but apparently said whisky was his favourite tipple on a tour bus.) But much less has been written about Leeds’ involvement in this monumental business deal. The Brand Cellar, which bought the Glen Rossie brand off First Quench, is based in Leeds. It is actually the brainchild of well-known Leeds man-abouttown Jonathan Hick. And Leeds PR agency Umpf will be promoting the brand. So, after Rossi promoting Glen Rossie, what other dodgy pun tie-ups can we think of? Given that Andy Bond is no longer chief executive of Asda, he could be looking for something…
>> The French have a word for it
>> Swishing and swirling This rather arty picture is actually a group of professionals from the Leeds region strutting their stuff on a catwalk at the Leeds Professionals Fashion Show Ball to help raise £8,400 for Yorkshire Cancer Care and Once Upon a Child – with match funding also coming from Barclays Corporate.
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I don’t really know what to think about Claire Young’s admission (see Working Lunch this issue) that she didn’t like the fact that L’Oreal sent around internal emails in French. You can’t really blame the woman, British attitudes to language learning being what they are. But can you really imagine a French person coming to work for the French office of Rowntree’s or Tetleys and being surprised that all their emails were written in English? Of course, said companies have long since become part of giant multinationals where English is the lingua franca. Tant pis, we Francophiles might say.
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EVENTS
SUMMER 10
BQ’s business events diary gives you lots of time to forward-plan. If you wish to add your event to the list send it to: editor@bq-magazine.co.uk
JULY
12 AUGUST Leeds Media Plays Pool. 6.00-8.00pm, The Elbow Room, Leeds. For more details visit www.yourchamber.org.uk.
1 JULY Leeds, York and North Yorkshire Chamber of Commerce networking breakfast. Leeds United Football Ground, 7.30-9.30am. For more details visit www.yourchamber.org.uk.
17 AUGUST The Met Club – Yorkshire’s own networking club. Ramada Encore, 5.30-7.30pm. For more details ring 01423 525622.
1 JULY The Met Club – Yorkshire’s own networking club. Hotel du Vin, Harrogate, 5.30-7.30pm. For more details ring 01423 525622.
25 AUGUST Leeds, York and North Yorkshire Chamber Business Lunch Harrogate. 12.00-2.00pm, Cedar Court Hotel, Harrogate. For more details visit www.yourchamber.org.uk.
1-4 JULY Leeds Loves Food. A four-day long celebration run by City Centre Management, Marketing Leeds and the Leeds Restaurant Association that aims to showcase all that’s best about food in Leeds. The event will include the unveiling of the winner of a competition the Leeds Hotel Association is running to find out which hotel in the city serves the best sausages. For more information go to www.leedslovesfood.com.
SEPTEMBER 1 SEPTEMBER Leeds, York and North Yorkshire Chamber Business Lunch York. 12.00-2.00pm, Quarks Restaurant, University of York. For more details visit www.yourchamber.org.uk.
6 JULY How Green Is Your Building? A Leeds, York and North Yorkshire Chamber of Commerce special event looking at best practice in making buildings eco-friendly. 9.30am-1.30pm, Shibden Hall Visitor Centre, Halifax. For more details visit www.yourchamber.org.uk.
2 SEPTEMBER Leeds, York and North Yorkshire Chamber of Commerce networking breakfast. Leeds United Football Ground, 7.30-9.30am. For more details visit www.yourchamber.org.uk.
7 JULY Leeds, York and North Yorkshire Chamber Business Lunch York. 12.00-2.00pm, Food and Environment Research Agency, York. For more details visit www.yourchamber.org.uk.
9 SEPTEMBER Leeds, York and North Yorkshire Chamber of Commerce networking breakfast. Piccolino, York, 7.30-9.30am. For more details visit www.yourchamber.org.uk.
7 JULY The Met Club – Yorkshire’s own networking club. City Inn, Leeds, 5.30-7.30pm. For more details ring 01423 525622.
9 SEPTEMBER Leeds Media Cocktail Evening. 6.00-8.00pm, Revolution Electric Press, Leeds. For more details visit www.yourchamber.org.uk.
7 JULY Leeds, York and North Yorkshire Chamber Business Lunch York. 12.00-2.00pm, Park Inn, York. For more details visit www.yourchamber.org.uk.
9 SEPTEMBER The Met Club – Yorkshire’s own networking club. Hotel du Vin, Harrogate, 5.30-7.30pm. For more details ring 01423 525622.
8 JULY Leeds Media Social Evening. 6.00-8.00pm, Toast Bar and Bistro, Leeds. For more details visit www.yourchamber.org.uk.
10 SEPTEMBER The Biz Awards. A full range of awards for businesses in Yorkshire that celebrate entrepreneurial success against the odds. 6.45pm till late, Cedar Court Hotel, Bradford. For more details ring Heather George on 01274 206660.
13 JULY Leeds, York and North Yorkshire Chamber of Commerce networking breakfast. Loch Fyne Restaurant, York, 7.30-9.30am. For more details visit www.yourchamber.org.uk. 15 JULY Leeds, York and North Yorkshire Chamber Construction Lunch. 12.00-2.00pm, Leeds United Football Ground. For more details visit www.yourchamber.org.uk. 15 JULY The Met Club – Yorkshire’s own networking club. YoYo Restaurant, Bradford, 5.30-7.30pm. For more details ring 01423 525622. 20 JULY Carbon Challenges and Opportunities for Business. A special event run by Leeds, York and North Yorkshire Chamber of Commerce. 8.00-11.00am, Holiday Inn, York. For more details visit www.yourchamber.org.uk. 20 JULY Bradford Chamber of Commerce Annual General Meeting and networking lunch. With keynote speaker John Tague, managing director of Seabrook Crisps. 12.30-2.30pm, Cedar Court Hotel, Bradford. For more details visit www.bradfordchamber.co.uk. 21 JULY The Met Club Business Lunch with the Archbishop of York. For more details ring 01423 525622. 21 JULY Leeds, York and North Yorkshire Chamber Business Lunch Scarborough. 12.00-2.00pm, Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough. For more details visit www.yourchamber.org.uk. 22 JULY Copyright for Creatives. A special chamber event on copyright law given by Ward Hadaway solicitors. 3.00-5.00pm, City Inn, Leeds. For more details visit www.yourchamber.org.uk. 26 JULY Leeds, York and North Yorkshire Chamber of Commerce networking evening. 5.00-7.00pm, Theatre Royal, York. For more details visit www.yourchamber.org.uk. 30 JULY Bradford Chamber of Commerce Cereal Networking. Introduce yourself in 30 seconds over breakfast. 7.30-9.30am, Great Victoria Hotel, Bradford. For details visit www.bradfordchamber.co.uk.
17 SEPTEMBER Leeds, York and North Yorkshire Chamber of Commerce Annual Lunch. 12.00-2.00pm, Queens Hotel, Leeds. For more details visit www.yourchamber.org.uk. 21 SEPTEMBER Leeds, York and North Yorkshire Chamber of Commerce networking evening. 4.00-6.00pm, Walkabout, Leeds. For more details visit www.yourchamber.org.uk. 23 SEPTEMBER Women in Business Forum. A one-day conference at Harewood House aimed at motivating today’s business women and at encouraging more large companies to bring highly skilled women onto the board. Key speakers include former cabinet minister Virginia Bottomley, Judith McKenna, chief financial officer at ASDA, Kate Bostock, executive director of clothing for Marks & Spencer, Ruth Sealy from the Cranfield School of Management, Alison Maitland, director of the Conference Board European Council for Diversity in Business, and Collette Dunkley, global head of marketing for Barclays Wealth. Fore more details go to www.thewomensbusinessforum.co.uk. 23 SEPTEMBER The Met Club – Yorkshire’s own networking club. Hotel du Vin, York, 5.30-7.30pm. For more details ring 01423 525622. 30 SEPTEMBER Leeds, York and North Yorkshire Chamber Construction Lunch. 12.00-2.00pm, National Centre for Early Music, York. For more details visit www.yourchamber.org.uk.
KEY:
5 AUGUST The Met Club – Yorkshire’s own networking club. Hotel du Vin, Harrogate, 5.30-7.30pm. For more details ring 01423 525622. 10 AUGUST Leeds, York and North Yorkshire Chamber of Commerce networking breakfast. Grange Hotel and Restaurants, York, 7.30-9.30am. For more details visit www.yourchamber.org.uk.
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16 SEPTEMBER Leeds, York and North Yorkshire Chamber of Commerce Golf Day. 12.00-9.00pm, Fulford Golf Club, York. For more details visit www.yourchamber.org.uk.
Please check with the contacts beforehand that arrangements have not changed. Events organisers are also asked to notify us at the above e-mail address of any changes or cancellations as soon as they know of them.
AUGUST
BUSINESS QUARTER | SUMMER 10
14 SEPTEMBER Leeds, York and North Yorkshire Chamber Business Lunch Scarborough. 12.00-2.00pm, Royal Hotel, Scarborough. For more details visit www.yourchamber.org.uk.
Acas: Advisory Conciliation and Arbitration Service, CECA (NE): Civil Engineering Contractors Association (North East), HMRC: Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, ICE: Institution of Civil Engineers, NSCA: Northern Society of Chartered Accountants, FSB: Federation of Small Business, Tbc: to be confirmed.
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BQY Issue 5.indb 83
Mill Sunderland Wessington Way, Sunderland, SR5 3HR Tel: 0191 516 8778
Mill Hexham Bridge End, Hexham, NE46 4JH Tel: 01434 605 303
Mill Stockton Preston Farm Business Park, Stockton, TS18 3SG Tel: 01642 673 251
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21/06/2010 15:08
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