GLOUCESTER CONSTRUCTION EQUIPMENT MANUFACTURER SEES BUSINESS ALMOST DOUBLE

A Gloucester construction equipment manufacturer saw business almost double and expand globally in 2020.

Wheatway Solutions manufactures an attachable bucket that fits on to earth diggers such as excavators, tractors and loaders, which sorts the earth into soil, compost and aggregates.

The company has now designed the attachment needed to fit the Gyru-Star onto the digger, which was previously outsourced.

Engineer Colin Smith established Wheatway Solutions more than 10 years ago.

The business now has six production sites and has worked with Gloucestershire Growth Hub to build its growth strategy based on innovation of products with potential to sell internationally.

Colin secured his first international deal in Sweden, which enabled the business to move into its first large industrial unit.

He said: “We tend to work with entrepreneurial dealers who are younger and smaller. They have more tenacity, more drive. Whilst it’s a risky strategy, it’s paid off for us.”

This strategy saw him risk a six-month sale or return option to an international client which resulted in the client becoming one of Colin’s largest accounts, delivering a minimum of £500,000 per annum in business.

He tackled Brexit by opening a warehouse in Belgium last November, allowing Wheatway to miss the port queues.

The Growth Hub has been one of the most helpful resources to grow his business. Colin said: “They have an extensive network. If I didn’t know something, they would connect me with someone that did and that has been a huge help in building the business.”

Wheatway Solutions has its sights set on the Rising Sun economies and further developing the USA markets.

Cheltenham tech company wins award for ageing app

The woman behind a Cheltenham tech company that develops software allowing people to visualise themselves as they age, has won a Best Businesswoman Award.

Changemyface makes software for education, science, health, pensions and human resources companies. Its apps, which have been downloaded more than a million times across the world, help reveal the effects on the human face of lifestyle choices such as drinking, smoking, tanning, diet, stress and pollution.

Businesswoman Auriole Prince, founder of Change My Face, won best woman in science technology engineering and maths in the Best Business Women Awards, a national competition founded in 2015 by entrepreneur Debbie Gilbert. Change My Face provides its face changing technology as a B2B SaaS (software as a service).

Auriole said: “My background is not in science and maths, but in art. During my career as a forensic artist for missing people, I trained with the Medical Artists’ Association of GB and the FBI Training Academy in Quantico, USA.

“Art and science became inextricably linked and grew into Change My Face, which is creating artificial intelligence and machine learning models using developers to create a way to visualise your future self with the effects of your lifestyle.

“Seeing oneself in the future can have an incredible impact sparking behavioural change. We have also built software for interactive exhibits at science museums in the US and Scotland and currently at the We The Curious science and education centre in Bristol.”

Some of Auriole’s early projects were for TV lifestyle programmes such as Embarrassing Bodies. Her first major project was for the Scottish Government – The Drinking Mirror app was launched in 2013 and has amassed more than 500,000 downloads.