SEVEN BRISTOL FIRMS ARE ONES TO WATCH IN CREATIVE INDUSTRIES COUNCIL’S ANNUAL LIST

Seven innovative Bristol businesses are among 100 UK-wide cited in the Creative Industries Council’s Ones To Watch 2021, an annual showcase of UK companies at the intersection of creativity and technology.

Judges were looking for companies that used technology in creative ways, which solved a problem or created new opportunities, had the potential to transform their sector and whose idea was commercially viable.

Winners included Calvium, a digital agency that has developed a digital placemaking platform to improve the visitor experience and local economies of towns and cities.

Lost Horizon, was the team behind the Shangri-La area at Glastonbury Festival. When the 2020 festival was cancelled, it staged the world’s first VR festival in a digital version of Shangri-La.

Swamp Motel adopted extended reality technology to bring immersive theatre experiences to audiences at home.

Other winners included Air Giants, which makes biomorphic robots. These are economical in their use of materials, being made of little more than air, fabric and control valves, can reach up to eight metres tall and interact with audiences.

Bristol Braille Technology CIC has made “a Kindle for blind people”, while BBT has developed the world’s only commercialised multiline braille display. Canute 360 allows blind people to read books, music and graphs.

Buttercup Learning has created an insectthemed early years literacy book with augmented reality, giving the illusion of eyepopping 3D insects coming out of the book.

And finally Condense Reality wants to be the first UK company to offer brands the ability to stream live events like sports games, music concerts and theatre productions inside the metaverse.

Evona wins New Business of the Year at Lloyds Bank British Excellence Awards

A space recruitment company which is less than three years old has won a Lloyds Bank British Business Excellence Award.

Evona, based in Bristol, says there is more to the space industry than simply training astronauts. Supporting functions include engineering, technology and the supply chain make the journey possible; a skilled STEM workforce is essential for the journey to space to exist.

Richard Joyce, Co-Founder of Evona, said: “We want to focus on our global mission, raising the curtain for the global space section, as space isn’t just for astronauts, it’s for everyone and it’s the future.”

The Park becomes Europe's largest wine packaging company

A Bristol bottling and warehousing facility says that in just one year it has become Europe’s largest wine packaging company, currently packaging one million bottles and 150,000 bags of wine daily.

The Park, based at Avonmouth, was formerly used to bottle and store wines from Accolade Wines, but has expanded to become a contract packer for any business in the drinks industry, with the capacity to bottle a further 10 million cases of wine, with the flexibility for even more during peak periods.

Experts in multi-format packaging, bulk wine shipping and blending wine, The Park packs many of the top 20 wine brands in the UK and boasts a certified carbon neutral site equipped with recipe creation labs and beverage blending facilities.

The Park has increased its headcount and recruited 50 more staff members. It is also rolling out a £750,000 investment to double stack 20ft containers, meaning 250 containers of wine can be stored onsite to provide a larger buffer against global shipping volatility and provide scheduling flexibility.

This will add to its existing 75 million bottle capacity storage to hold a further eight million bottles – this means that The Park will soon be able to store enough wine to fill nearly 25 Olympic-sized swimming pools.