In today's business briefing, Simon and Robyn discuss North West companies scaling up, Easyjet expanding in Liverpool and the acquisition of a Yorkshire-based Crufts supplier.
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00:00Which companies are scaling up? An 80s classic makes a comeback, EasyJet's
00:05expansion and a Crufts supplier acquired. That's what's coming up in today's Daily
00:10Business Briefing.
00:16Hi I'm Simon Keegan and I'm Robin Hewson. So Robin we've got some breaking news of
00:23EasyJet's expansion here in the Northwest, tell us a bit more about that.
00:27Yeah absolutely, so EasyJet is expanding its Liverpool John Lennon base.
00:31So that comes off the back of the firm posting pre-tax profits of £610 million,
00:36so a pretty good year for EasyJet and good for Northwest customers because they're going to be
00:41having an additional aircraft based at the Liverpool John Lennon airport. They've seen
00:45a real increase in customers going through Liverpool, it goes 18% up compared to the
00:50previous year and it's all about sort of leisure travel rather than business. They've just got
00:56holidays and things like that that have really driven this growth, so they've decided to expand
01:00operations in Liverpool and it's also going to create about 400 jobs, so yeah real boost for
01:06Liverpool. Oh that's amazing, well I'm a bit of a retro kind of guy as people have pointed out.
01:13Yeah but there's a bit of a retro retail trend that's caught my eye. So before you were even a
01:21twinkle, a popular home computer in the 80s was the ZX Spectrum. So this was the
01:29brainchild of Sir Clive Sinclair, who was a bit of a boffin and inventor,
01:36eventually sold to Alan Sugar's Amstrad, but for a while in the 80s it was the kind of computer to
01:42have and it had so many amazing iconic games on it. But now the Spectrum is making a comeback,
01:50retro games and it just makes me think, you know, maybe we're going to see technology going in that
01:55sort of retro direction. Reminds me of another story as well, one of the shortlisted companies
02:01at the International Trade Awards, they're called Harman Technology. You have them on one of your
02:07round tables? Yeah we have yeah, quite well known in the northwest aren't they? They are yeah,
02:11so they do the Ilford photo range, which is film photography, so they produce the film
02:18and I think particularly their black and white film is having a real resurgence and
02:25people enjoy it. I suppose for the same reason people enjoy kind of vinyl records, you
02:31know, maybe it's not as crisp and as clear but there's something just kind of nice
02:36about it. I think film photography is a massive trend with like Gen Z at the moment, so it's
02:40definitely having a comeback. Yeah and I think it's that thing of, you know, you've got those 24
02:45shots and you've got to make them count and you can't redo it, you can't put a filter on it,
02:50it's just got kind of something genuine about it really hasn't it? And you've got a
02:56deals story that's caught your eye as well I believe? Yeah well you know I love a Yorkshire
03:01story, so we've got one today about a South Yorkshire based dog agility equipment company
03:07that's been acquired by its counterpart. So its first contact, which is based in Deepcar,
03:12was founded in 2003 and it's built up to become a really important supplier for things like Cruffs,
03:18the dog festival if you're familiar. Yeah so I mean I remember watching Cruffs on TV, so this is
03:24when you say dog agility, this is the little mazes that the dog has to run around and go through the
03:29tunnels and all that business. Yeah absolutely, so that's what the company does. They've been acquired
03:35by a Barnsley based company, Naylor Agility, so they're on a real sort of growth journey at the
03:40moment. It's the second acquisition that they've made even this year, so really fast growing.
03:45This is going to enable Naylor Agility to further expand its product offering, so they're now going
03:50to be doing dog walks, see-saws and A-frames. If any of that means anything to you? Not really, but
03:57it sounds great and it's always good to hear a growth story. Yeah absolutely. Talking of growth
04:01stories, Northwest Business Insider, the latest issue of the magazine is out. One of the features
04:08that we've got in it is a new one called the Scale Up 75. Now as you know a lot of the lists
04:15that we do in Insider that are really popular, it tends to be based on the success that a company
04:21has already had. So top 500 based on profit and turnover or we'll do the SME 300 or we'll do the
04:28family business and it's about the figures that they've already reported. Well the Scale Up 75 is
04:34a look into the future. So what we've done is we've partnered with Growth Flag
04:39and we've used the, I say we, I stay away from technology. The spectrum in the 80s was my limit.
04:47That's as much technology as you want. Exactly, but somebody has fed the metrics into this. So what
04:53we've done is we've predicted the companies that are going to grow by 20 percent in the next year.
05:01So this and then we're ranking them by the percentage chance of them growing. So it's a
05:08really insightful look into the future using this unique Growth Flag which is part of Red Flag
05:16technology. Now what I found surprising was you would think wouldn't you when people talk about
05:22scale ups it's all medtech, there's fintech, all that kind of thing. But no, it's real traditional
05:28industries that we're seeing in there, you know, asphalt and steel and engineering and stuff like
05:34that. So I think that says a lot about the the strength of the region in some of our traditional
05:39industries. So look out for that in the latest issue. And I mentioned Ilford Photo, they're one
05:48of the, Harman Technology make Ilford Photo, they're one of the companies that shortlisted
05:53for the International Trade Awards and of course we've got the International Trade Awards next week.
05:58Next week, December the 4th, really really looking forward to that. And what's the venue this year, it's changed hasn't it?
06:03Yeah, it's over at the Midland this year, so that's really exciting. So early Christmas
06:09party for us. Yeah, lovely venue. It is, absolutely. So I think that's all we've got time for. So you
06:15can follow up any of these stories on insidermedia.com and don't forget to give me and Robin
06:20a follow on LinkedIn as well. See you next time.