Member Article

Growing a business with an evergreen fund

It’s finance week on Bdaily and we are looking at the landscape of funding and investment, from both sides of the table.

The North West Fund is a substantial evergreen investment fund in excess of £150m established to provide debt and equity funding from £50,000 to £2m to businesses based in the North West of England. It is designed to help create jobs and prosperity in the region through minority investments in growing businesses.

Bdaily found out about some of the businesses that have already benefitted from the fund.

PlaceFirst, the innovative energy and regeneration business, received equity and loan facilities from The North West Fund for Energy & Environmental, managed by CT Investment Partners, in July 2012.Since then, it has achieved significant growth in turnover, developed an executive team and recruited of a number of new roles in the North West.

Founder and managing director David Smith-Milne formed the Didsbury-based business in 2009, as a consultancy firm in the physical housing regeneration and renewable energy sectors.

Mr Smith-Milne said: “We would not have been able to grow the business in such a short space of time without the excellent support of The North West Fund and CT Investment Partners.

“Through close collaboration with The Fund, we have created a structured debt and equity investment that is aligned to the growth requirements of the business.

“The investment managers at The Fund took the time to properly understand our business to create a bespoke financial instrument that is now helping to drive the growth of our innovative products and services in the energy and housing sectors.

“This growth created the need for additional staff with two new starters having joined recently and plans in place to seek another two recruits in the near future.”

The business has evolved to a point where it now invests alongside its traditional clients, including landlords in the social housing sector. It was among the first private businesses in England to finance and install large-scale solar PV projects across social housing.

Projects are typically either managing the retrofitting of renewable energy technologies on social housing or creating private-public sector partnerships with local authorities and registered providers of housing in order to regenerate empty housing with energy efficient technologies.

Mr Smith-Milne added: “The funding and staff expansion are already helping to position PlaceFirst as one of Manchester’s most innovative businesses tackling fuel poverty and housing regeneration across the UK.”

For more related articles please visit- Bdaily meets crowdfunders; A day as the bank manager; Funding for lending- the story so far; Back to basics on credit reports; SMEs using less external finance and Financing a graduate startup.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Miranda Dobson .