The six winners of this year’s Collaboration Prize, a £60,000 fund to develop new consortium co-ops in Scotland have been announced.
The prize, delivered by Co-operative Development Scotland on behalf of Scottish Enterprise and Highlands and Islands Enterprise, means each winner gets £5,000 to implement their idea and £5,0o0 in business support. They also receive start-up advice and export advisor support.
Two of this year’s winners, food and drink consortium Made In Scotland and graphic design and event branding consortium Look Team, were chosen for their strong focus on international markets, a key theme for this year’s competition.
The other winners are health and wellbeing group Healthworks; soft drinks collaboration Start-Up Drinks Lab; cybersecurity experts Terrier Risk Partners; and offsite construction consortium Offsite Hub.
Made in Scotland is a collaboration of 11 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 resources and experience.
Willie Cameron from Made in Scotland said: “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.
“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.”
Look Team, based in Glasgow, is a graphic design and event-branding collaboration between two businesses which worked on Glasgow’s Commonwealth Games 2014, World Gymnastics Championships 2015 and UCI Track Cycling World Cup 2016.
Their consortium co-operative will pitch complete project planning and management service for other large sporting events, and they plan to expand into other markets around the world.
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.
“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.”
Healthworks in an East Lothian-based team of health and wellbeing professionals, working with businesses to optimise their employees’ physical, psychological and personal wellbeing.
Its four members offer expertise in areas including physiotherapy, nutrition, psychological therapies and counselling, fitness training, behavioural risk management training and employee health assessments.
Karen Davison from Healthworks said: “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.”
Glasgow’s Start-up Drinks Lab brings together soft drink companies Tongue in Peat and FOAL Drinks in a bid to tackle challenges faced by drink entrepreneurs in Scotland that result in them having to compromise on quality, cost or location.
They want to offer 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, focusing initially on Scotland then expand into the rest of the UK and eventually and North America.
It will use the prize money to pay the first few months’ rent, so it can move in and fit out the factor, buy the first pieces of equipment and engage experts to help fit the site out.
Hannah Fisher from The Start-up Drinks Lab said: “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.”
Edinburgh’s Terrier Risk Partners offer expertise to businesses in online risk assessment, business continuity, protection and recovery.
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. It will use the prize money 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.”
South Lanarkshire’s Offsite Hub comprises nine companies involved in offsite construction. Together with a number of public sector partners (such as Napier University and SDI) it aims to improve working environment in the construction industry, reduce waste and improve the performance of buildings in terms of construction, comfort and 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’ proposed for Sweden next year and representation at a conference on offsite construction in Salford next year.”
Sarah Deas, director of Scottish Enterprise, said: “The response to this year’s Collaboration Prize has been fantastic and as a result we have six brilliant winning consortia.
“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.
