Scotish Enterprise announces winners of colloboration prize

Six new Scottish consortia are celebrating after winning a share of the £60,000 Collaboration Prize, delivered by Co-operative Development Scotland on behalf of Scottish Enterprise and Highlands and Islands Enterprise.

Launched for entries in September 2016, the Collaboration Prize attracted a record number of responses from across Scotland.

Entrants to the Prize had to pitch an idea for a new collaborative enterprise.  Each of the winning collaborations will receive £5,000 (to implement their collaborative idea), advice to set up as a consortium co-operative, up to £5,000 business support (delivered by Scottish Enterprise or Highlands and Islands Enterprise), and export advisor support where appropriate. 

Accessing new and international markets was a specific focus of this year’s competition and two of the six prizes were awarded to consortia which demonstrated particularly strong international ambitions to be delivered via the collaboration. These consortia – Made in Scotland and Look Team – were awarded the prizes at last night’s HSBC Scottish Export Awards, held in Glasgow. 

Made in Scotland, which has members across the country, is a collaboration of eleven Scottish companies involved in the food and drink sector.  The consortium offers a range of products including salmon, cheese, cakes and charcuterie as well as craft gin, craft beer and whisky. The collaboration will enable member businesses to offer the basket of Scottish produce to lucrative overseas markets by pooling together their resources and experience, both intellectually and financially. 

Willie Cameron from Made in Scotland commented on winning the Prize:  “It is fantastic news to hear we have been successful. The money and support will enable us to access expert advice on marketing food and drink on a global scale, as well as allowing us to develop our brand and create a website with e-commerce functionality. This will help us to really get our name and offering out there on a magnitude that would be far more difficult for us to achieve as individual companies.

“Not only does working together enable us to reach an international customer base as a whole, it also encourages us to support each other by highlighting new opportunities that we think will benefit individual members.  By continuing to collaborate, we aim to further boost Scotland’s global reputation as a producer of some of the finest food and drink in the world, hopefully attracting more of the country’s like-minded, quality producers to join us along the way.”

Look Team, based in Glasgow, is a graphic design and event branding production collaboration between two businesses which provided the branding and wayfinding solutions for three major events in Glasgow: the Commonwealth Games 2014, the World Gymnastics Championships 2015 and the UCI Track Cycling World Cup 2016.  The two businesses have successfully formed a consortium co-operative to facilitate pitching a total project planning and management service for other large sporting events. They plan to expand into other geographic markets across the UK and internationally. 

Paul Fennon from Look Team said: “The cash and support will help us achieve a number of goals, beginning with in-depth research of the global sporting events market and investigating the best way to scale our operation internationally. The commission of a bespoke Inventory Management System for managing and tracking event Kit of Parts (KOP) will help us to streamline our services and increase efficiency, giving us a competitive edge when tendering for contracts. We also plan to get in front of the right people by identifying and attending major international trade shows, allowing us to forge potentially lucrative relationships and explore significant business development opportunities.

“Forming the consortium enables us to deliver a unique service which is usually provided by two distinct companies. Working so closely together means we can combine our expertise and push creative and technical boundaries in ways that others in our field don’t. Having achieved a significant degree of success on a national level, our ambition now is to mirror that success internationally and we look forward to the doors that collaboration will open.”

The other Collaboration Prize winners were:

• Healthworks: A team of health and wellbeing professionals that have come together to help businesses optimise their employees’ physical, psychological and personal wellbeing. The new venture will create innovative and bespoke health and wellbeing services that are truly integrated.
• The Start-Up Drinks Lab: A collaboration by two innovative soft drink businesses who aim to work together to solve manufacturing challenges faced by drinks entrepreneurs in Scotland. The focus is to establish accessible manufacturing facilities that meet the small scale production requirements of start-up drink businesses.
• Terrier Risk Partners: Three experienced businesses coming together to provide cyber security solutions allowing them to tender for larger contracts such as the opportunities offered by the Scottish Government and partners including the Digital Scotland Superfast Broadband. Their joint expertise includes risk assessment, business continuity, protection and recovery.
• Offsite Hub: This collaboration comprises nine companies involved in offsite construction. Following the UK Government’s 2025 Construction Strategy identifying offsite construction as a vehicle for delivering improvement targets for the construction sector, Offsite Hub was formed to promote improved market awareness, address emerging skills challenges and to foster a collective approach to ongoing research and development in the use of timber construction technology. Sarah Deas, director, Scottish Enterprise, commented on the Prize: “The response to this year’s Collaboration Prize has been fantastic and as a result we have six brilliant winning consortia, all of whom will be using the support and funding they won to structure their consortiums, develop their business ideas and access new markets.
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“Through the Prize the aim is to inspire businesses to be innovative and consider collaboration as a means to achieve growth.  By collaborating businesses can reduce costs, share risks and create new platforms for growth.” 

The Collaboration Prize was delivered by Co-operative Development Scotland on behalf of Scottish Enterprise and Highlands and Island Enterprise in partnership with Business Gateway and the Scottish Chambers of Commerce.

ENDS

For further information, commentary or photography, please contact the CDS team at Smarts Communicate on 0141 222 2040 / 07970834354 or email cds@smartscommunicate.com

Notes to editors

Information on each of the six winners including a quote can be found below:

Made in Scotland – Members throughout Scotland

This is a collaboration of eleven Scottish companies involved in the food and drink sector, producing a range of products from salmon to cheese, from cakes to charcuterie and a range of craft gin, craft beer and whisky. The purpose of the collaboration is to offer the basket of Scottish produce to the global market but to do it by pooling together their resources and experience, both intellectually and financially, to create a route to market for high quality SME producers.

Look Team - Based in Glasgow

Look Team is a graphic design and event branding production collaboration between two businesses which provided the branding and wayfinding solutions for three recent major events in Glasgow: the Commonwealth Games 2014, the World Gymnastics Championships 2015 and the UCI Track Cycling World Cup 2016.  The two have formed a consortium co-operative to facilitate pitching to provide a total project planning and management service for upcoming events in Glasgow, and to expand into other geographic markets across the UK and internationally. 

Healthworks - Based in East Lothian 

Healthworks is a team of health and wellbeing professionals, working in genuine partnership with businesses to optimise their employees’ physical, psychological and personal wellbeing. Between the four members, the consortium offers a range of expertise in areas including physiotherapy, nutrition, psychological therapies and counselling, fitness training, behavioural risk management training and employee health assessments. Working with businesses to identify the health, and behavioural risks and barriers that prevent them from getting the best from their employees, Healthworks develops innovative, truly integrated health and wellbeing services and solutions that clients can ‘own’. Each service is designed to address the unique needs and culture of the individual business and delivered in the way that best meets their needs.

Karen Davison from Healthworks said:  “We are thrilled to have been selected as one of the winners and are looking forward to working together to develop programmes which will have a wide-reaching benefit for both employees and their employers. The generous prize will help us brand, package and promote our offering to get it in front of the right people, as well as enable us to develop new resources and tools to boost the services we can deliver, both face to face and online. 

“Working together in this manner is beneficial for many reasons – not only does it allow us to access more opportunities and secure larger scale contracts, it also gives us all an excellent degree of professional satisfaction. Delivering a truly comprehensive service that reflects the many intricate aspects of an individual’s health and wellbeing requires a tailored approach incorporating expert knowledge and experience across a range of disciplines. We believe collaboration is the most effective way of providing this, and are hopeful that we can continue to develop our offering as we are joined by members in further areas of expertise.”

The Start-up Drinks Lab – Based in Glasgow

A collaboration by two innovative soft drink businesses - Tongue in Peat and FOAL Drinks - who aim to work together to solve challenges faced by drinks entrepreneurs in Scotland that result in them having to compromise on quality, cost or location. The main focus is to establish facilities to alleviate the manufacturing challenge created by the limited number of small scale manufacturing options for start-up drink businesses in Scotland.  They plan to do this by offering a full suite of services including product development, manufacturing, packaging and business support as well as providing a small scale bottling facility with pasteurisation, carbonation, capping and canning not currently readily available in Scotland.

The consortium’s long-term plan includes both market and service expansion. Geographically, it will focus initially on Scotland then expand into the rest of the UK, eventually aiming to grow into Europe and even North America.

As well as benefitting from the support, manufacturing advice and guidance of Scottish Enterprise, The Start-Up Drinks Lab will use the prize money to pay the first few months' rental, meaning the company can move in and fit out the factory.  Furthermore, it will be able to purchase its first pieces of equipment and engage experts to help fit the facility out to a full operational specification.

Hannah Fisher from The Start-up Drinks Lab (and Tongue in Peat) said:  “I met Craig from FOAL Drinks at an Entrepreneurial Spark event where we quickly discovered our businesses faced similar challenges.  We then heard about the CDS Collaboration Prize and decided to enter.

“We have often talked about setting up small scale manufacturing facilities to benefit our own businesses but when going through the research process to validate our idea for the competition, we realised we were not alone in this pain point and that many great Scottish brands were forced to go down south to produce, losing that all important ‘made in Scotland’. We felt and continue to feel more passionate everyday about making sure we help Scotland and its produce by giving its producers an accessible platform.”

Craig Strachan from The Start-up Drinks Lab (and FOAL Drinks) added: "Collaboration has been of massive assistance for my own company, FOAL Drinks, and for me personally. The anticipated cost savings by opening the lab will be of fantastic benefit, allowing us to be more competitive and provide our awesome customers with an even better offering.  Furthermore, our regular meetings and focus groups have been given a different perspective and have given us some excellent introductions, especially in the food and drink arena. This will be invaluable going forward and is especially important for start-up businesses.”

Terrier Risk Partners – Based in Edinburgh

Three experienced businesses coming together to capitalise on initiatives offered by the Scottish Government such as the Digital Scotland Superfast Broadband by offering expertise in risk assessment, business continuity, protection and recovery.

This is a combined offering for firms who have identified a need to improve their ability to protect against and recover from IT related disasters.  The collaboration aims to provide a 360 degree review of each organisation’s risk exposure and then recommend solutions that are appropriate to the size, needs and budgets of their clients.

Terrier Risk Partners strongly believes that the services it is offering are valuable to businesses and supply a solution to problems identified by the Scottish Government, industry bodies and academic research.

Following its win, Terrier Risk Partners intends to fund the implementation of a brand, website and various other marketing materials. 

Tom Inglis from Terrier Risk Partners said:  “The business support we will receive from winning is invaluable as it will help us to grow the business.  We’re hoping to work with Scottish Enterprise to explore partnership opportunities and utilise PR opportunities to help us raise our profile as well as marketing support to assist in developing the offering and positioning us in the marketplace.”

Offsite Hub – Based in South Lanarkshire

This collaboration comprises nine companies involved in offsite construction, providing a leading edge technology in the construction industry. Together with a number of public sector partners (such as Napier University and SDI) it aims to realise the full potential of Scottish Offsite Modern Methods of Construction by improving the working environment in the construction industry, reducing waste from that sector, and significantly improving the performance of buildings in terms of construction, comfort and long-term running costs. 

Calum Murray from Offsite Hub said:  “Support in translating ideas into practical action will be hugely useful for us and we plan to utilise this support from Scottish Enterprise.  For instance, in approaching UK wide institutions with the right message as a group, the assistance will be essential.    We are exploring other possible uses for the funding and support, including a ‘learning journey’ being proposed for Sweden next year and representation at a conference on offsite construction in Salford next year.”

About Co-operative Development Scotland (CDS)

Co-operative Development Scotland (CDS) is the arm of Scottish Enterprise working in partnership with Highlands and Islands Enterprise that supports company growth through collaborative and employee ownership business models. It also works in partnership with other organisations to support the development of community co-operatives such as renewable energy and broadband.

For further information see www.scottish-enterprise.com/collaborationprize or call on 0141 951 3055.  Follow CDS on Twitter @cdscotland or look at the blog www.cdsblog.co.uk

About Scottish Enterprise

Scottish Enterprise is Scotland's main economic development agency and aims to deliver a significant, lasting effect on the Scottish economy. Our role is to help identify and exploit the best opportunities for economic growth. We support ambitious Scottish companies to compete within the global marketplace and help build Scotland’s globally competitive sectors. We also work with a range of partners in the public and private sectors to attract new investment to Scotland and to help create a world-class business environment.

About Highlands and Islands Enterprise (HIE) Highlands and Islands Enterprise (HIE) is an economic and community development agency implementing Scotland's Economic Strategy across a region which covers more than half the country.  With around 300 staff, HIE supports hundreds of client businesses and social enterprises; strengthens communities, particularly in fragile areas; develops growth sectors, and invests in infrastructure to create a more competitive and low carbon region.

About Business Gateway

Business Gateway provides practical help and advice to thousands of existing and new-start companies across Scotland every year.  In addition to an extensive workshop programme that tackles the issues affecting Scotland’s business community, and a comprehensive online resource at www.bgateway.com, businesses with growth potential can also access support from a network of specialist advisers across the country. 

About Scottish Chambers of Commerce

With over 11,000 members across a national network of 26 local chambers, Scottish Chambers of Commerce is Scotland's most powerful business network.  We focus on providing business insight, economic intelligence and business to business connections for our members.