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Meet the 5th birthday Blueprint finalists

The North East’s university business planning competition, Blueprint, has announced the finalists that will go through to the Business Awards category at the Grand Final of the awards this October to battle it out for a share of £75k cash.

Only 10 student-based businesses will become finalists at The Grand Final of ‘Blueprint 2008’. Both staff and alumni entrants from Durham, Newcastle, Northumbria, Sunderland and Teesside Universities will be chasing the big cash reward and in-kind support prizes to help get their business off the ground.

The Blueprint Awards, originally launched in 2003/2004, has seen over 130 businesses set up in its five year lifespan, over 690 business plans submitted and has created over 240 jobs in the region. There are three award categories; the main Business Awards, Science and Technology Awards and the Creativity and Design awards. The entrants into the latter two categories will be announced at the Pilot your Pitch event on 3 September.

Compère for the event for the fifth year running is local TV news journalist Kim Inglis. Kim said: “I have presented the awards from its launch back in 2003 and every year I cannot fail to recognise that the standard of the business idea entries gets higher.

“Last year Professor Brian Tanner said that he would give a case of wine to the first Blueprint business that got to a one million pound turnover. Let’s hope that this year’s entrants can make that happen.”

This year’s Grand Final of the Blueprint Competition will be held on 23 October, at the Hilton Newcastle Gateshead. To find out more email scientific.enterprise@dur.ac.uk.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ruth Mitchell .