MARCH 2020 £3.50 YORKSHIRE & LINCOLNSHIRE’S LEADING BUSINESS MAGAZINE www.blmgroup.co.uk VOLUME 35 ISSUE 3 Upgrade and innovateEnvisioning eco optionsThe cost of compliance 01.qxp_Layout 1 06/03/2020 10:48 Page 1Welcome to NNBC Financial & NNBC YMP (Your Mortgage Plus) dedicated mortgage & protection specialists and commercial & business financial brokers, we have a whole of market access from high street banks to specialist lenders in residential and commercial finance, to help get the best solutions and deals for you. MORTGAGES • First-time buyers • Movers • Re-mortgaging • Equity Release • Commercial & Business Mortgages • Landlords & Buy to Let • Development & Self Build • Bridging Finance PROTECTING YOUR HOME & FAMILY Your Mortgage Plus do not charge a fee for Insurance and Protection advice • Life Cover • Critical Illness Cover • Income Protection • Buildings & Contents Insurance Tel: 07918 027657 | www.nnbcfinancial.co.uk Email: neil@nnbcfinancial.co.uk or neil@yourmortgageplus.net We are available 9am to 10pm 7 days a week Your home may be repossessed if you do not keep up repayments on your mortgage Professional whole of market mortgage, protection, equity release & commercial, business finance brokers Experienced Experienced mortgage brokers and commercial & business finance brokers. Friendly We are a friendly bunch here at Your Mortgage Plus, we always start by having an informal chat and a brew! Informative We will keep you informed every step of the way. Simplicity We are here to make the process as easy as possible for you. We don’t use any financial jargon, we keep everything nice and simple. • Asset Finance • Leasing • Contract Hire • Sale & Leaseback • Property Development Finance • Commercial Property and Business Mortgages • Factoring and Invoice Finance 02.qxp_Layout 1 06/03/2020 10:48 Page 1I almost hesitate to mention Covid-19 for fear it’ll be grossly out of date by the time you’re reading this, given the speed at which the coronavirus has encompassed the globe since the first cases were announced in December last year. But with warnings from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development that the virus is sinking the world economy into its worst downturn since the 2007-08 global financial crisis; with large parts of Europe tipped for recession, and with the outbreak causing the MIPIM event to be rescheduled, businesses are right to be concerned. Supply chains and stock are already being affected, with the food and pharmaceutical sectors set to be some of the worst affected. Given the prevalence of both sectors here in our region, it’s probable that local firms won’t escape the crisis unscathed. Financial results released later this year will certainly make for interesting reading. It’s timely, then, that our finance feature explores ways in which companies can raise funds, but also how they can save money in-house with leaner, more efficient business practices and operations. The future of the petrochemical industry is the focus of this month’s spotlight which explores the ways in which businesses can balance growth with sustainability. Lowering CO2 emissions is also at the forefront of the materials & components feature, specifically what innovative eco-friendly materials and green building methods the construction industry can turn to. Legal services, meanwhile, highlights some of the most pressing business law services offered to companies, and Brexit rears its head in the freight, storage & movement feature. Our March issue is truly a barometer of the region, with the high-quality updates, insight and comment you’ve come to expect from Business Link. Good reading, as always Michael Fisher Editor From the Editor VISIT WWW.DEXTERSHARPE.CO.UK FOR FURTHER INFORMATION Dexter & Sharpe Chartered Certified Accountants At the heart of Lincolnshire We provide a comprehensive range of services, if you would like to find out how we can help you or your business why not head over to the contact us page to find your local office. Our 130 years of experience has taught us to initially listen more than we talk. When we talk, you’ll find that it's plain jargon-free practical advice which is not only accurate but tailored to your specific needs. Having gained a full understanding of your business our aim is to ensure this timely advice helps you and your business achieve its objectives. For a pro-active, friendly and accessible service or your FREE Consultation contact one of our teams: Horncastle: 01507 526071 - Boston: 01205 311966 - Spilsby: 01790 753340 Bourne: 01778 393656 - Louth: 01507 609933 - Skegness: 01754 763222 - Lincoln: 01522 533588 AGRICULTURE • CHARITIES • CONSTRUCTION • FINANCIAL & CONSULTING • MANUFACTURING • MEDIA • MOTOR RETAIL & REPAIR • TRANSPORT & LOGISTICS • VETERINARY 03.qxp_Layout 1 06/03/2020 10:49 Page 1MARCH 2020 6 News The latest business news and success stories from around our region 10 Business Lincolnshire Q&A We sat down with Mark Hurdley, EU Transition Adviser for Business Lincolnshire, to discuss how businesses can best prepare for the end of the transition period. 12 Commercial property With more political certainty on side, occupiers and investors are now better positioned to consider longer- term planning. But with a dearth of availability, Yorkshire’s industrial property market still has challenges to overcome. 16 Petrochemical spotlight For the petrochemical industry to avoid going the way of coal, it must respond to environmental concerns and embrace new technologies to lower its emissions output and help Britain achieve a cleaner, greener energy future. 22 Freight, storage and movement Our region has some of the biggest concentrations of warehouses, roads and docks, but recent political challenges are abound. Materials and components Playing a major role in climate change, as a key source of CO2 emissions and waste, the building materials and components industry is seeking a sustainable future. Legal services From data protection to intellectual property, there’s a raft of legal services to help assist, inform and guide businesses to operate with knowledge and confidence and react accordingly in the event of litigious action. Finance Finance is ever an issue for any business, with cash flow often being the most important figure a company can look at. Coming off the back of a recession and now facing Brexit, it’s imperative that companies take every step at their disposal to maximise the efficiency of their cash flow. Corporate hospitality Corporate hospitality is a key strategy for many businesses looking to build relationships with clients and make a business stand out. Sports hospitality in particular provides a great environment for creating an experience to remember. AutoLink The new crop of license plates launch this March and continue through to the end of August. New cars bought and registered between these dates will be sporting one of these new 20 series plates. So what new cars are launching and being showcased during this period? • We put the all-new Lotus Evora GT410 through its paces Events We take a look at business events happening around Yorkshire and Lincolnshire And finally… Yorkshire-Lincolnshire- Business-Link @blmforum blmforum.net CONNECT WITH US 12 22 30 04-05.qxp_Layout 1 06/03/2020 10:51 Page 1Group Editor Steve Fisher (s.fisher@blmgroup.co.uk) Editor Michael Fisher (m.fisher@blmgroup.co.uk) Assistant Editor Dominic Cuthbert (d.cuthbert@blmgroup.co.uk) Journalist Dominic Cuthbert (d.cuthbert@blmgroup.co.uk) Editorial contact newsdesk@blmgroup.co.uk Tel: (01472) 310305 Fax: (01472) 310317 Angela Cooper (a.cooper@blmgroup.co.uk) Sam Trott (s.trott@blmgroup.co.uk) Vicky Hunt (v.hunt@blmgroup.co.uk) Kerry Randerson (k.randerson@blmgroup.co.uk) Tel: (01472) 310301 Fax: (01472) 310311 Tel: (01472) 310304 Fax: (01472) 310314 Haychart Ltd, Armstrong House, Armstrong Street, Grimsby, N.E. Lincs., DN31 2QE. reproduced, transmitted, photocopied, recorded or otherwise without express permission of the copyright holder, for which application should be addressed first to the publisher. While every reasonable care is taken, neither the publisher nor its prints, colour transparencies, negatives or other material of whatever nature submitted to this publication. The views expressed in this publication are not necessarily the views of COVER PHOTOS: LOTUS • SHUTTERSTOCK - HXDYL • TONTON • JIRSAK • AVIGATOR FORTUNER www.blmforum.net 16 04-05.qxp_Layout 1 06/03/2020 10:51 Page 2Yorkshire project awarded funding to decarbonise steel industry An interdisciplinary team from the Universities of Leeds and Sheffield has won £1.26 million from the Centre for Research into Energy Demand Solutions (CREDS), which is funded by UK Research and Innovation, to develop approaches that blend technology and policy with the aim of decarbonising the UK steel industry within 30 years. Professor Nick Eyre, CREDS Director, said: “Decarbonising the UK energy system is a major national challenge for the coming decades, nowhere more so than in major industrial processes. I am therefore delighted that colleagues from Leeds and Sheffield are joining CREDS to research steel industry decarbonisation.” Professor William Gale, from the School of Process and Chemical Engineering at Leeds and the project’s principal investigator, added: “This project will bring together a range of experts: from scientists and engineers involved in researching alternative methods of production or ways to recover it from scrap – to policy and business experts analysing the policy initiatives and incentives needed for this change.” 6 Business Link www.blmforum.net NEWS Sills & Betteridge add partner to regional commercial law team Law firm Sills & Betteridge has appointed leading South Yorkshire corporate lawyer, Neil Large, as partner. Mr Large joins with over 20 years’ experience as a corporate and banking lawyer, with leading UK national and regional full-service law firms. He specialises in the full range of corporate transactions including cross border, all types of debt and equity finance, and all aspects of company and commercial law. His clients include local, national and international businesses and their stakeholders, private equity and venture capital funds, business angel investors, banks, asset and trade finance lenders, MBO/MBI teams, high net worth individuals, entrepreneurs, and real estate investors and developers. He will be based primarily in Doncaster and will also support his corporate and banking colleagues in the firm’s Lincoln and Nottingham offices. James Conduit, head of the Corporate Team, said: “Neil is an excellent corporate lawyer with a wealth of experience which will bolster our already very strong corporate team here at Sills & Betteridge.” Screen Yorkshire’s Film Office has handled more than 360 film and TV production enquiries in its first year of operation. Opening for business in November 2018, the Film Office provides the first port of call for producers looking to film in Yorkshire and needing specialist advice and help. 27 high-end TV productions and 14 feature films have filmed in Yorkshire in the last 12 months, generating over 1500 days of work for regional crew. The value of filming activity to Yorkshire and the Humber is substantial with budgets for high-end TV dramas, such as Gentleman Jack , and feature films like Downton Abbey averaging between £10 million and £20 million per project. “The Film Office is a critical, expert, component in driving this business to Yorkshire and in its first year alone has demonstrated just how valuable a resource it is,” said Chief Executive, Sally Joynson. © Shutterstock /Norenko Andrey Neil Large © Shutterstock /gnepphoto ‘Extremely successful first year’ for Yorkshire Film Office 06-09.qxp_Layout 1 06/03/2020 10:53 Page 1www.blmforum.net Business Link 7 NEWS Yorkshire named best place to grow a tech business Yorkshire has been named as the best place in the UK to grow a tech business in new research from the Leeds City Region LEP. The analysis showcases Yorkshire’s 48% increase in digital tech jobs over the past three years. This increase has meant that tech jobs within the region have risen from 58,000 to 86,000 and is the highest growth rate by far, outpacing the rest of the UK, including London. Delving further into the 86,000 tech employees based in Yorkshire, two-thirds are based within the Leeds City Region (66%). Alongside a huge increase in tech employees, the region has seen a 313% increase in venture capital investment between 2014 to 2019. Other key facts which help Yorkshire stand out from the crowd when it comes to tech include the 8,695 digital tech businesses and a digital tech turnover of £3.67 billion. Humber LEP secures £3.25m to boost skills & employment £3.25 million in additional funding has been awarded to the Humber Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) to provide new services across the region’s employment and skills sector. The LEP successfully bid for the funding from the European Social Fund (ESF) National Reserve Fund. It will now put out calls for projects which organisations will be able to bid into to deliver programmes aligned to our employment and skills strategy aims in the Humber. The calls will cover projects including support in the workforce for those aged 50 plus, mental health support for employers, improved digital skills and leadership training. One call is now live – with £750,000 of ESF funding available for an organisation to run a project to provide Leadership and Management training for businesses across the Humber. Meanwhile, the remaining calls will soon go live via the European Structural and Investment Funds (ESIF) National Reserve Fund. © Shutterstock/Ubermensch Matt © Shutterstock/winui £7.5m awarded for second phase of Humber hydrogen project The government has awarded £7.5 million in funding for the second phase of Gigastack, a new renewable hydrogen project in the Humber region led by Ørsted, Phillips 66 Limited, Element Energy and Sheffield’s ITM Powder. The funding was awarded as part of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) Hydrogen Supply Competition. The Gigastack project will show how renewable hydrogen derived from offshore wind can support the UK’s 2050 net-zero greenhouse gas emission target. As part of the initial feasibility phase of the Gigastack project, which finished in 2019, ITM Power developed designs for a low-cost modular 5 MW electrolyser ‘stack’, collaborating with Ørsted to understand the potential synergies with offshore wind farms and with Element Energy to undertake a market analysis and explore business models for the first industrial-scale 100MW electrolysers. For the second phase of the project, which has now received funding from the department for BEIS, the consortium will conduct a Front-End Engineering Design (‘FEED’) study on a 100MW electrolyser system using staged installations with a nominal capacity of 20MW. The FEED study will detail the actual design of a hydrogen production system connected to a wind farm and industrial off-taker using ITM Power’s new generation of electrolyser stack technology, renewable energy directly from Ørsted’s Hornsea Two offshore wind farm, and with the resulting renewable hydrogen supplied to an industrial off-taker; Phillips 66 Limited’s Humber Refinery. A key objective of the project is to identify and highlight regulatory, commercial and technical challenges for real applications of industrial- scale renewable hydrogen systems. As part of the second phase, ITM Power will also install and trial both their next-generation electrolyser stack and the semi-automated manufacturing machines required for large-scale and high-volume manufacture of these new large low-cost stacks. This will help validate a complete production system capable of delivering hundreds of megawatts of electrolysers per year. © Shutterstock/Anusorn Nakdee 06-09.qxp_Layout 1 06/03/2020 10:53 Page 28 Business Link www.blmforum.net NEWS Women now make up third of all FTSE 100 board members Women now make up a third of all FTSE 100 board members, according to the government-backed Hampton-Alexander Review. The review found that 33% of all FTSE 100 board members are now women – up from 12.5% less than a decade ago. According to former Business Secretary Andrea Leadsom, the target has been achieved on an “entirely voluntary” basis, rather than resorting to legislation, fines or penalties. Despite this encouraging headline figure, more work needs to be done. For example, the review highlights a concerning dearth of women in senior leadership and key executive roles in FTSE companies – with just 15% of FTSE 100 finance directors being women. The review also shows that more work is needed for the FSTE 250 to meet the 33% target as it currently stands at 29.5%. © Shutterstock /El Nariz RenewableUK role for former Grimsby MP Melanie Onn, the former MP for Great Grimsby, has been named as the new Deputy Chief Executive for trade association, RenewableUK. Ms Onn served as MP for Great Grimsby from May 2015 until the she lost her seat to Conservative Lia Nici. During her political tenure, she served as Shadow Minister for Housing, Communities and Local Government and Shadow Deputy Leader of the House of Commons. In her new role as Deputy CEO, she will focus particularly on public speaking and media work. She will also lead on helping the association’s supply chain members to grow, and on the development of the skilled workforce the industry needs, including opening up wider areas of the sector to more women. Speaking about Ms Onn’s appointment, Hugh McNeal, Chief Executive of RenewableUK, said: “She’s a powerful advocate for renewable energy and has been instrumental in the transformation of Grimsby, a global hub for offshore wind.” © RenewableUK Project secures £6m to boost rural connectivity in North Yorkshire North Yorkshire has secured £6 million in funding for a project exploring how superfast mobile connectivity can bring benefits to rural communities in the region. The £6 million Mobile Access North Yorkshire (MANY) project was one of seven projects chosen in the national Rural Connected Communities (RCC) competition. MANY will aim to use innovative technology to bring mobile connectivity to some areas of North Yorkshire currently missing out – 35% of the county currently has no 4G mobile coverage. It will also test how superfast mobile connectivity can benefit England’s largest rural county in boosting tourism, tackling social isolation and acting as an early warning system for flooding emergencies. The innovation project is led by Quickline Communications, one of the UK’s largest wireless internet service providers, with the County Council as a key partner to integrate the project with communities. Other partners include a mix of specialist SMEs and the universities of York and Lancaster. Scheme seeks Sheffield businesses looking to export to India Sheffield businesses are being sought to apply to a new scheme which aims to boost regional exports to India. The ‘India Growth Champions’ scheme is a joint venture between the Sheffield City Region (SCR) and the UK India Business Council (UKIBC). It is searching for ten SMEs looking to develop their business links with India. This will culminate in a trade mission in autumn. Successful applicants will receive ten days of dedicated support. Alongside the development of an India business plan which will include company-specific market research and competitor analysis alongside workshops and business mentoring. Each successful business will be guaranteed a minimum of five appointments with potential partners whilst in India as part of the trade mission. The scheme officially launches on Tuesday 17 March at an event at the Grant Thornton office at Holly Street in Sheffield, when the application process will officially open. © Shutterstock/ Iaremenko Sergii 06-09.qxp_Layout 1 06/03/2020 10:53 Page 3the whole country’s potential. Sheffield Forgemasters are one such example of how a great Yorkshire- based company is helping to attract the most highly skilled engineers and drive forward the Northern Powerhouse,” she said. Forgemasters showcase capabilities to Conservative Party Chair The co-Chairman of the Conservative Party recently visited Sheffield Forgemasters to see the company’s work into civil nuclear power manufacturer. Rt Hon Amanda Milling, MP for Cannock Chase, was given a tour of the company’s facilities, showcasing the crucial role of civil nuclear power manufacture within the UK defence industry supply chain and the company’s skills base. During the visit, Ms Milling was briefed on the company’s leading role in a £10 million project, funded by the Government’s Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS), under its Nuclear Innovation Programme, to industrialise electron beam welding for civil nuclear assemblies. “As promised at the General Election, we will level up and unleash www.blmforum.net Business Link 9 NEWS © Shutterstock /alphaspirit Johnson gave the controversial high-speed train line the go-ahead. could top £100 billion – Johnson said that going ahead was the best thing to do. Parliament has backed both the London to Birmingham line and the HS2 rail line gets go-ahead despite mounting costs Birmingham to Leeds and Manchester lines. Johnson said he would integrate the latter project with the wider Northern Powerhouse Rail scheme. Andrew Stephenson has been appointed as full-time HS2 and Northern Powerhouse Rail minister to oversee the project. Evangelists of the rail line claim it will not only improve transport times and increase capacity but create jobs and boost the UK’s economy – which would more than compensate for the huge price tag. Rt Hon Amanda Milling MP 06-09.qxp_Layout 1 06/03/2020 10:53 Page 4Next >