Project boost is great news for growing firms

Added by Love Business East Midlands | 22 January 2019

UPDATED: 22 January 2019

Lincoln BIG and Lincolnshire Chamber of Commerce are celebrating being awarded additional funding for a special project – in a move which spells good news for growing county businesses.

The partners have been given extra money by the European Regional Development Fund for the Collaboration 4 Growth (C4G) project, which means they can help more expanding businesses through until December 2021.

Lincoln BIG Chief Executive Sarah Loftus said:

“This is fantastic news. The project, which provides support to new and existing SME businesses in the form of grants and support to help enterprises to grow and diversify, has already invested over £800,000 in backing those based in the City of Lincoln, North Kesteven and West Lindsey Council areas.”

The extension to the project could provide boost more individual businesses through the offer of either 12 hours of free business advice and support in areas such as marketing, organisation or finance or, alternatively, a revenue or capital grant of between £2,000 and £7,000.

Businesses can also access individual or group support covering topics including social media, understanding their customers, or target marketing and more.

Grants contribute 60 per cent towards the cost of a project and can be used to assist with business expansion.

“The project has been in operation since Autumn 2016 and has provided help to more than 140 businesses across the Lincoln, North Kesteven and West Lindsey Districts,” said Sarah.

Previous grants have been used by a wide variety of firms, for the development of marketing plans and website design and to partially-fund factory and office equipment to streamline production processes.

Recipients have included: Lincoln-based PR Shooting Star | PR, Marketing and Digital agency, which received a grant of £3,270 to help the business to create a top of the range website and employ a new Digital Marketing Executive to work on the maintenance and content of the site, bolstering its offering in the digital sector.

Senior Marketing Manager Sharon Foster said:

“We’d encourage anyone looking to make improvements to their business to take a look at the opportunities available from the C4G project.”

Lincoln Family-run shredding and recycling company ShredMaster, which handles confidential and non-confidential waste, received a grant towards the cost of a Tipping Machine to cut the time taken to empty large plastic boxes containing material for shredding.

Managing Director David Spraggins said: