After receiving £250 to fix a broken car bumper, Managing Director, Jess Warneken had different plans. She bought the first (of many!) commercial fridge freezers to begin Naturaw – a Certified B-Corp, multi-award winning raw dog food business. Watch as Jess and Director Chris Broadbent tell the story of the UK’s highest rated dog food
As Mercia’s NPIF Debt and Equity teams celebrate hitting significent investment milestones, Pete Sorsby (Fund Principal, NPIF II – Mercia Debt Finance) and Will Schaffer (Investment Director, Mercia Ventures) detail the deals and the impact the funds are already having on ambitious businesses across Yorkshire & Humber. Learn more about Mercia Debt Learn more about
Introducing Talk Straight Group – a leading provider of ISP, connectivity, security and e-safety services to schools throughout England. CEO, David Tindall describes how Mercia Debt’s funding has been beneficial in supporting him through a recent MBO. Learn more about Mercia Debt
Mercia Debt can help accelerate your business growth. Founder of Change Accountants, Stacey McVeighty, outlines the reasons why she took debt funding to bolster the growth of her accountancy business after acquiring another local practice in York. Learn more about Mercia Debt
Mercia Ventures‘ Dr Marina Fuentes sat down with Promethean Particles CEO, James Stephenson to talk through its Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) technology, their work in the carbon capture space and what the future holds for this unique manufacturing facility in Nottingham. Learn more about Mercia’s Northern VCTs
iOpt‘s technology allows landlords and tenants to receive real-time information about the condition of a property, alerting them to potential issues before they arise. Their award-winning sensor technology is monitoring thousands of properties across the UK, helping councils maintaining schools and houses, whilst ensuring tenant welfare. CEO, Dane Ralston explains more about the technology and
So what makes you want to start your own ski holiday business? Co-founders and brothers of the Bristol-based, Heidi – Marcus and Alexander Blunt – tell the story of how a ‘spreadsheet holiday’ turned into one of the fastest-growing online tour operator specialising in flexible ski holidays. Mercia Ventures led a £5.6milllon round into Heidi
Mercia Debt is able to unlock further vital finance to help your SME grow. Managing Director of Thornton Park Farm, Richard Dunnett, explains how Mercia Debt’s £100,000 loan secured a further £50,000 rural grant to support the construction of five luxury glamping pods and diversify their income from farming activities. Learn more about Mercia Debt
Earlier this year, we participated in a £7.5m seed round into IsomAb, a UK-based biotechnology company developing a novel treatment for a common cardiovascular condition. The links between heart health and lifestyle are well known but deaths from cardiovascular diseases continue to rise. In fact, one such disease, atherosclerosis, has now surpassed communicable diseases to
If you ask founders in the UK where they see opportunity in terms of growth, it’s likely that a significant number will say that entering the US market is a key milestone. Making this move provides a game-changing opportunity for growth – but it isn’t always easy. Expanding to the US comes with a lot
The most unpredictable and vulnerable component of any security system is the human factor. Forrester reports that “90% of data breaches will include a human element”[1]. Despite this, security teams and investors have been focused on standalone technological defences – firewalls, antivirus software and intrusion detection systems. There is continuing evidence that these reactive tools
In March of this year, Mercia Ventures led a £8.5million fundraise into Edinburgh-based Wobble Genomics Ltd. Wobble has found a way to detect previously invisible ‘full length’ RNA, and the technology could have wide-ranging applications, from drug development and research to agriculture and ecology. To find out a bit more, Mercia TV travelled across the
New CEO Mick Bradley shares insights on how Manchester-based, Netacea is leading the way in cybersecurity against bot attacks and what makes them stand out in the industry.
Introducing Mercia Ventures‘ newest business, FinLegal. CEO, Steven Shinn tells the story of how conversations with law firms turned his SaaS idea into reality. FinLegal’s platform helps engage and register more claimants with a law firm, automate workflows and enables firms to go live with new claim opportunities in weeks, not months.
Kirsty Henshaw is the Managing Director and Founder of Kirsty’s. Mercia TV sat down with Kirsty to speak about the humble beginnings in her kitchen to producing 25,000 free-from meals a day in her factory in Harrogate, investment from Mercia Ventures, and the future of the UK’s leading free-from food manufacturer. Mercia Ventures £2million investment
CEO Dr Mark Payton joined Proactive’s Stephen Gunnion with more on the company’s strong full-year 2024 performance. Dr Payton also highlighted Mercia’s strong financial performance, including growth in revenue, EBITDA, and its proposed final dividend, and shared ambitious goals for the next three years, including doubling EBITDA and raising assets under management to £3 billion.
Generative AI, powered by Microsoft and OpenAI, offers exciting possibilities for your organisation. In an exclusive session for Mercia portfolio businesses, we’ll explore how this technology can enhance your tech solutions.
Eric Horvitz, the Chief Scientific Officer at Microsoft, recently said: “We’re in the early days of a revolutionary era of digital biology rising at the convergence of biology and computer science. Advances at the intersection will fundamentally change our understandings about the mysteries of biology, with extraordinary implications for health, medicine, and sustainability.” Such strong
Mercia Debt has been appointed as fund manager of the NPIF II Debt mandate for Yorkshire & the Humber by the British Business Bank, supporting the growth of small and medium-sized businesses. Fund Principal, Pete Sorsby, tells Mercia TV how the new fund has a key role to play in the region’s strategic objectives.
Mercia Ventures has been appointed as fund manager for the NPIF II Equity Fund focused on Yorkshire & the Humber by the British Business Bank, to successfully continue deploying capital to exciting growth companies. As one of the UK’s most active investors, Mercia Ventures has an already established strong track record in supporting businesses across
Professor Victoria Hutter, Dr Ewelina Hoffman and Dr Rhamiya Mehendran talk to us about ImmuONE‘s lead in vitro products, its impact with its customers, whilst documenting their growth journey.
STEPS Rehabilitation was one of the first businesses to receive funding from the NPIF Debt fund via Mercia in 2017, to help it develop and grow. Hear from Founding Directors, Jules Shiels-Boulger and Ray Boulger, Head of Therapies, Lucy Wright and spinal injury client, Dr Ed Hudson, as they give an insight into one of
WorkBuzz‘s, Steve Frost (CEO) and Melisaan Foster (CXO), explain how this leading HRTech company is helping organisations across the globe in recruiting, retaining and cultivating positive cultures through its actionable employee engagement surveys.
Since Mercia Ventures first invested in Graide in 2022, a lot has changed in the world of artificial intelligence. With the rise of ChatGPT and other LLMs, AI is rapidly becoming part of everyday life. Through its unique approach, Graide is bringing this transformative innovation to the education market. In December 2023, almost two years
Fund Principal for Mercia Ventures, Sandy Reid hosts a brand new investment round-up, highlighting some of those founders who are making a real impact with their products and services. Companies showcased in this video include, Social Value Portal, Medherant, Forensic Analytics, ImmuONE, and FDC’s Cornerstone Partnership.
Tamworth’s Cornerstone Partnership unites the private and social sectors and engages people to invest in a shared vision to deliver social housing solutions that lead to lasting, positive change. Frontier Development Capital helped support a £10.2million package with the West Midlands Combined Authority and Birmingham City Council which gave Cornerstone the capital it needed for
There were a few eyebrows raised when Mercia Ventures invested in a ski travel business in June – especially when the investment was led by two people who have never actually been skiing. But Jan Oosthuizen and Adam Watts are incredibly excited to be partnering with Marcus, Alexander and the entire Heidi team on their
Why we invested: Promethean Particles, with Dr Marina Fuentes Combining my passion for climate tech with impactful innovation. I’ve always been passionate about climate tech and sustainability. My journey into environmental awareness started at a young age when my mother, who herself grew up immersed in nature in the Cantabrian countryside, gifted me the book
Managing Director for Mercia Ventures, Will Clark, showcases a few of the investees who have seen exponential growth in their business, thanks to investment via the British Business Bank Midlands.
Fund Principal for Mercia Ventures, Sandy Reid, details the impact the Midlands Engine Investment Fund has had on the East Midlands, and how the capital deployed has bolstered the SME landscape. Hear also from Milton Keynes-based ImmuONE and WorkBuzz, on how Mercia Ventures has helped take each business to the next level of growth.
The adage “a team is only as strong as its weakest link” resonates profoundly within today’s complex supply chains. The rising frequency of cyberattacks in supply chains – a trend highlighted by Gartner’s prediction that by 2025, nearly half of all organiszations will experience attacks through their software supply chains – underscores this vulnerability. A
We feel privileged to have backed the Founders of over 100 software businesses at Seed to Series A over the years. Despite 2023 being one of the gloomiest years in venture in recent memory, we continued to be active, with new investments into Social Value Portal, Risk Ledger, Centuro Global, HowNow, Kuano, Envoke-Demos, Huler, FourJaw
Last year, Mercia Ventures spearheaded a £2 million investment into ImmuONE, the spin-out developing groundbreaking 3D human lung models that reduce reliance on animal testing. Before a new drug, chemical or product is launched, assessing safety for humans is crucial. Historically, this often meant testing on animals. Not only does this pose ethical concerns, but
Cell and gene based therapies are the next frontier in medicine. Unlike other therapies they have the potential to cure diseases as opposed to merely treating the disease, as is the case with more traditional treatment modalities. It feels like they almost belong in a sci-fi movie; genetically engineering a patient’s own cells or replacing
Using Equiwatt’s disruptive app is the easiest, most effective way to save energy and help the planet. Watch as Founder and CEO, Johnson Fernandes gives Mercia TV an update of the current enhancements to Equiwatt’s technology, details its virtual power plant solution, signing a new contract with Scottish Power and how users can get even
Newcastle University spin out, Newcells Biotech are experts in building functional in vitro models to improve clinical translation and drug discovery. As well as this, they provide clients with validated in vitro tools to understand how drugs interact with tissues, and enable the generation of robust and informative data to support critical decisions during any