Finance Durham Fund: Fuelling Business Growth

“Business support helps you step back and look at the bigger picture. It’s easy to get lost in the day-to-day tasks, but having someone from outside the business to discuss ideas with, to push us forward, has been crucial.”

The benefit of speaking to Maven about the Finance Durham fund is the flexibility of the fund on offer, which means we can invest from a small amount up to several millions via equity or debt.

Maven helped us in terms of facilities by introductions into Business Durham, and also the funding opportunities here in County Durham, which really did help pull a package of measures together, which made the premises we're in today, Jade Business Park, that compelling proposition.

For anyone looking to develop their business idea, DCI provides the resources and community to make that journey less daunting and more successful.

The DCI programme has been fantastic. The personal support, mentoring, and different perspectives from the cohort have validated my belief that what I'm doing is correct and has a real impact.

The support and friendships I've developed through DCI have been invaluable. Learning from other start-ups and having a community to lean on has made a significant difference in my entrepreneurial journey

The DCI program has been instrumental in our journey. The networking opportunities and support from DCI contributors have been invaluable in shaping AImploy into the company it is today.

We have been delighted with the support that Business Durham and their partners have provided our company and with additional funding, we hope to further develop our working practices to safeguard our existing business and expand our capabilities to meet new customer demands and expectations.

NETPark is a fantastic place to do business in terms of facilities, potential for growth and for collaboration.

The facilities and ancillary business services here are second to none and the campus feel of the science park suits the culture within the company.

The ecosystem in NETPark is just right for us; SEEDS first came here because of its partnership work with the CPI and now our vision is to have a busy lab facility developing various applications and licensing them out to companies.

We expect to more than double the team in Sedgefield to 45 over the next two to three years, with a larger commercial team allowing us to expand our global footprint.

Teescraft Engineering has been a major employer in County Durham for a number of years and I’m delighted that, with grant support through the County Durham Growth Fund, the company is embarking on ambitious plans to significantly expand.

We knew we had the space to add new machines which would not only improve productivity and efficiency but also allow us to add new products and processes, the County Durham Growth Fund helped this happen.

The Caring Caretaker is a company that’s grown from one to a team of 41 and is now, with grant support from the County Durham Growth Fund, in the process of taking its business journey to the next stage, moving to much larger premises and creating a further 10 jobs, cementing its long-term future here in County Durham.

We’ve been incredibly lucky to have secured financial investment from Business Durham which really has been crucial to the growth of the business and fast-tracked our plans in such a short space of time.

The grant we’ve received from the County Durham Growth Fund has been invaluable to us as without it we probably would have only been able to purchase one machine.

We were looking at investing in new machinery which would enable us to expand our client base, and our accountant mentioned the County Durham Growth Fund to us.

Investing in this additional space means we now own our future – we’re not in anyone else’s hands and that’s a fantastic position to be in.

We took on more space than we needed to, allowing for our planned growth over the next five years, however with the grant support we’ve had from the County Durham Growth Fund, we are now looking at achieving our projections in the next three years.

It has been a testing couple of years due to the pandemic and this support has been invaluable. Going forwards, we intend to invest further in technology and skills to strengthen our position in this competitive marketplace.

We’ve got a great team now and looking ahead this year, for us it’s about building on what we have, and then expanding with new orders and further investment at the right times to propel this business forward in this new space.

The machinery we’ve been able to purchase with the support of the County Durham Growth Fund is far more advanced than anything we were using previously and means we’re able to work in a far more exact and precise way.