Scottish Enterprise pledges nearly £190 million of direct business support

Scottish Enterprise today revealed spending plans which should see nearly £190 million invested in direct support for Scottish businesses over the next three years.

The figures were included in Scottish Enterprise’s Business Plan for 2009-12 which was published today.

In the next year, this will see over £17 million invested in specialist support for companies, which includes help to develop leadership and management capabilities in the current climate as well as manufacturing support through the Scottish Manufacturing Advisory service. 

It also includes almost £14 million to drive forward innovation within Scottish companies and encourage them to invest in research and development and a further £26 million to increase the availability of risk capital for Scottish companies.  An additional £5 million will be invested to help businesses expand into new overseas markets. 

Scottish Enterprise Chairman, Crawford Gillies said:  “Over the past few months we have been working very closely with businesses and our public and private sector partners to identify the real impact of current economic downturn on Scottish companies.

“As a result, we have reallocated our resources to ensure we are investing more of our budget in direct business support. The change in resource allocation will help companies through a number of activities, including increased advice and guidance, additional resources for equity investment and through extra support to exploit new markets, both at home and abroad.”

Jack Perry, Chief Executive of Scottish Enterprise added:  “There is no doubt that the events of the past year have created new challenges not just for our companies, but also for Scottish Enterprise itself. We have worked hard to ensure that we can respond to the needs of our companies quickly and effectively, while at the same time continuing to focus on the long term goals of a sustainable and successful Scottish economy.

“Over the next year we will also be encouraging our business customers to think creatively about how they develop new products and processes, implement new ways of working and target new markets, as well as challenging existing business models.  Last year’s organisational restructuring created major savings which have been redeployed in front line services.  This is part of a continual process and we will work to identify further efficiencies, which can be invested in more support for our customers.”

The Business Plan details a number of activities to support economic growth, including:

• Support for 200-300 companies to improve their performance by operating more efficiently.
• intensive hands on support for up to 25 high growth start up companies, which have the potential to grow into £5 million businesses over the next three years.
• Attracting at least 1,800 high value jobs through inward investment to boost employment in Scotland’s key sectors.
• Support for 600 – 700 companies to access new international markets
• Stimulating an additional £60 - £70 million of business investment in R&D activity.
• Support for 700-800 companies to explore new ways of working through our range of innovation advice and support.
• attracting more than double the contribution from the private sector in our high impact business infrastructure projects compared with our own investment
• Leveraging at least twice as much private sector equity investment in Scotland’s companies from our investment products.

Scottish Enterprise will also continue to invest in projects to increase the competitiveness of Scotland’s key industries across the globe and boost Scotland’s overall long-term economic performance.

This includes placing more emphasis on the commercialisation of Scotland’s outstanding science and research base, and putting more resources behind those projects most likely to become the high growth technology companies of the future.  The integration of ITI Scotland with Scottish Enterprise’s wider commercialisation activities will be a key component of the new approach.

Scottish Enterprise will also bring forward a further £30 million of investment in capital projects such as the Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre, Edinburgh BioQuarter and Fife Energy Park to support growth in the tourism, life sciences and renewable energy sectors.