BRISTOL'S ROLLS-ROYCE LEADS THE WAY FOR UK INNOVATION FUNDING, WITH £689 MILLION

Rolls-Royce, which has its principal defence site at Filton near Bristol, has been awarded the most innovation funding of any UK company over the last 18 years.

The research, conducted by intellectual property services and R&D tax credit company GovGrant, analysed publicly available Innovate UK data.

Over that time, the global aerospace manufacturing giant has been awarded £689 million in funding by national innovation agency Innovate UK, equivalent to £38.2 million each year.

This is more than four times more than any other company received for innovation projects, and accounts for seven per cent of all Innovate UK awarded funding, according to GovGrant.

Rolls-Royce employs about 3,000 people in Bristol and approximately 20,000 across the UK.

Overall, businesses across the South West region attracted just over 11 per cent of Innovation UK funding since 2004, worth more than £647 million. This is the third highest figure from the UK’s 12 regions, ranking above East of England, East and West Midlands.

A third of the UK's aerospace and defence GDP emanates from Bristol, where Airbus and Boeing also have major sites. Airbus Operations Ltd and Airbus UK Ltd are other Bristol-based companies featuring in the top five bestfunded businesses for innovation, winning combined total funding of more than £210 million from Innovate UK since 2004.

Luke Hamm, CEO at GovGrant, said: “Rolls-Royce is a compelling success story and it highlights the vital role that innovation funding plays in supporting local economies, and could contribute to the wider ‘levelling up’ agenda if targeted correctly. Innovation awards for Rolls-Royce are clearly contributing to the wider UK economy by financing training academies, filling the country’s talent pool with highly-skilled people.”

Wildlife man secures seven figure HSBC funding to increase exports

A Gloucestershire company which says it is the UK’s leading designer and manufacturer of wildlife-friendly products for the garden, is to use a seven-figure funding package from HSBC UK to expand across the UK and internationally.

Wildlife World plans to increase its volume of exports to Europe by 50 to 100 per cent over the next 12 months.

The award-winning business, which is based next to The Wild Carrot Cafe at Manor Farm Barn, Chavenage House at Tetbury, has fulfilment centres across the US and Europe and sells to businesses across both continents, in addition to a large market in the UK.

Wildlife World is anticipating a 20 per cent increase in turnover during the year.

Norman Sellers, the 70-year-old founder and CEO of Wildlife World, said: “It’s been great to begin our international expansion plans here at Wildlife World.

“Conservation is at the very heart of what we do, and this business growth means we have the opportunity to support even more wildlife across the UK and Europe with our range of sustainable products.”

David Butler, Area Director for Business Banking in the South West at HSBC UK, added: “From planting native hedgerows to using recyclable cardboard for packaging, Norman and the team have a clear passion for conservation and sustainability. They have demonstrated a commitment to this cause, and a drive to design innovative products.”

Wildlife World works with a range of European conversation organisations including the RSPB, National Trust, Bat Conservation Trust and Buglife.

With the spiralling costs of tuition, accommodation and basic living (not to mention socialising), university life is expensive enough without undergraduates having to pay hundreds of pounds for textbooks every year of their degree course.

BibliU could be the answer.

Launched in 2015 at the University of Oxford’s start-up Incubator, BibliU helps university students access online course books more affordably, and is now used by 112 leading universities from Oxford and Cambridge to Cornell and Phoenix in the United States.

The platform allows higher education institutions to license textbooks and courseware, primarily in digital format – for all students for a single, low, standardised per student/per class fee.

The costs of university textbooks have risen by four times the rate of inflation since 1977, with many students turning to second-hand, rented or even pirated copies to make ends meet. This has led to publishers increasing their prices to recover lost revenues, exacerbating the problem further.

BibliU is now expanding in the USA, having raised $15 million in a Series B funding. The fundraise will help new product development, additional publisher partnerships and further investments in sales and marketing.

Investors included Bristol-registered Wealth Club. Alex Davies, Wealth Club CEO said: “BibliU is solving longexisting problems with modern-day tools. It allows students to access course materials at little or no costs, helping to improve the accessibility of education while improving learning outcomes. This has delivered great commercial success in a growing market and the pandemic has only accelerated demand.”

BibliU co-founder Dave Sherwood, added: “The funding will enable BibliU to develop technology that further automates content management for publishers, streamlines the complexities for institutions associated with managing learning content, and –most of all – support our clients’ goals to advance student success in an equitable manner.”

Nick Dixon-Clegg, Principal at Oxford Science Enterprises, said: “We have invested in the company since 2017 and are impressed by the growth delivered by simultaneously solving problems for students, higher education institutions and publishers.”

In 2021, BibliU achieved 236 per cent revenue growth and launched its universal learning solution, aggregating digital content from thousands of publishers and open educational resources sources on one platform for one low price, per student, per class.