Hosted by the Liverpool City Region Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP), Andrew Griffiths MP, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy visited Liverpool City Region last week (Thursday 14th June).
A number of local businesses, higher education representatives, LEP and Combined Authority colleagues joined LEP MD Mark Basnett for a roundtable discussion on Liverpool City Region priorities and opportunities; growth hubs; the help businesses need to grow and scale up, the importance of schools, colleges and universities working with business to ensure residents have the right skills set for work; access to finance and the importance of local industrial strategies.
Mark Basnett, MD of the Liverpool City Region LEP said: “We welcomed this opportunity to host a roundtable and share our views with Andrew Griffiths MP, it was a fantastic opportunity for the Minister to hear firsthand from some of our amazing SMEs here in the City Region. It also enabled us to talk about some of the work we are doing in the City Region, including highlighting the groundbreaking programmes we are delivering such as LCR4.0 and LCR Activate.
“Andrew Griffiths was particularly interested in the work we are doing around scale up – on how we can help businesses to grow and overcome the barriers that may be stopping them from achieving even greater growth.”
The Minister was then given a tour around Sensor City by Executive Director, Alison Mitchell, to see first-hand how the technical innovation centre has created a collaborative community, providing SMEs with access to equipment and support, both internally and from other key knowledge assets in the region. The Minister was introduced to three Sensor City tenants; Aqua Running, GasX and DefProc Engineering.
Aqua Running Founder, Terry Nelson, described the benefits of his unique no impact training, exercise and rehabilitation programmes, and demonstrated their revolutionary Aqua Running hydro suits.
GasX, showcased their design and development of IoT/Fog computing solutions and prototypes, including hardware and software and their companion OSS & BSS systems.
Concluding the tour was a visit to meet DefProc Engineering. Established 5 years ago DefProc is an SME working with both individuals and businesses to support them with their products, services, development of ideas and manufacturing physical items for prototypes and small runs.