Just Play Golf has received a £50,000 micro loan from the Development Bank of Wales to help buy and fit out a golf range in Penrhys, Rhondda Cynon Taff.  

The brainchild of Matthew Phythian, Just Play Golf wants to make the new range a valuable community resource with one-to-one and group coaching and lessons available for people living in the area. Matthew achieved his own PGA qualification through a social enterprise that offered qualifications and training in a range of sports to deprived communities.

London-based TechApp Consultants, a specialist in bespoke antenna solutions, has signed up to the national SPRINT business support programme. TAC will develop a new range of low-cost and high-performance beam-tracking antennas for non-geostationary satellites, in collaboration with SPRINT partner, the University of Surrey.

The project will be funded by a grant from the £4.8 million SPRINT programme.

Enhancing diversity and inclusion is a top priority for over a quarter (28%) of business leaders, as companies seek to improve workplace culture in a competitive hiring market says reseach by Robert Half UK.

Inotec AMD, a Cambridge based, fast-growing medtech business that has developed a novel device capable of healing complex chronic wounds, has secured investment of £7m. The funding round was led by Praetura Capital, with involvement from Boundary Capital.

The business has developed a world leading medtech product, called NATROX® Oxygen, for use in Wound Therapy. It generates pure humidified oxygen to treat a range of chronic wounds, from diabetic and venous ulcers to non-healing surgical wounds.

Coutts, the Private Banking arm of NatWest, together with BGF, the UK and Ireland’s most active investor in growing businesses, are working on plans to launch The UK Enterprise Fund to bring additional funding and support to entrepreneurs across the UK.

The partnership will build on Coutts and BGF’s existing platforms, drawing on the significant scale and financial firepower of the two companies.  It will identify and address equity gaps across the whole of the entrepreneurial ecosystem, with specific initiatives and programmes for female-led businesses and aimed at increasing the diversity of management teams.

The majority of advisers have a very positive view of the importance of ESG in portfolio construction, according to a new study[1] among financial advisers by Foresight Group.

The research, conducted among more than 100 financial advisers, revealed that: almost two-thirds of advisers (64%) see ESG considerations as ‘important’ when building portfolios for their clients, of which 15% see it as ‘very important’.

Scotland’s leading female-founded, organic and sustainable whisky distillery, Nc’nean, has successfully raised more than £1.7m in a new funding round from both a crowdfunding campaign and private investors to help accelerate its current growth plans.

The innovative whisky distillery exceeded its funding target in little over a week after launching the campaign on investment platform Seedrs. Further funding was injected from existing and new private investors, bringing the total funding to over £1.7m.

Symvan Capital's Kealan Doyle explains why EIS investments should generate ‘alpha’ in your investment portfolio and why fund management fees resemble carbon monoxide.

Analysis of global startup hubs by Outlier Ventures, as part of London Blockchain Week has revealed that London may be one of the most preferred hubs for blockchain start-ups to headquarter themselves. 

Marco Art Ltd, one of the first wide-format print centres in the UK, has secured £3.3 million in working capital from Independent Growth Finance (IGF) after outgrowing its initial MBO funding from 2014.

Founded in 1992, the Surrey based company specialises in the design and supply of wide-format digital printing for live events, exhibitions, retail and building wraps, and its clients include high-profile brands such as Harrods, Penhaligon and the Paris Air Show.  

BVA BDRC has published the fourth Women in Business report, based on data from the SME Finance Monitor. This report, covering the period up to and including Q2 2019, provides analysis of key aspects of SME Finance Monitor data by the gender of the owner, senior partner or majority shareholder.

BGF has exited its minority stake in Vysiion Group, a communications infrastructure and outsourced IT service provider. The business has been acquired by Exponential-e, a cloud, network and unified communications company.