Business News Round Up (23/10/2023)
Scottish college graduates will boost Scotland’s economy by £52 billion over their working lives
New research shows the Scottish economy will be £52 billion better off cumulatively over the 40-year working life of college graduates. The report from the Fraser of Allander Institute shows that over their working life, college graduates boost employment, increase real wages and contribute to increased trade and investment. Researchers studied the impact of the 2016-17 to 2021-22 college graduate cohorts and calculated that every college graduate in Scotland creates an additional £72,000 boost to productivity for the Scottish economy as a result of going to college. These graduates also help to support the equivalent of an additional 203,000 full-time jobs in the Scottish economy, over their 40-year working lives. Colleges bring the added benefit of directly providing the equivalent of 10,700 full-time jobs, and they support a further 4,400 jobs elsewhere in the economy through their supply chain spending. For just the class of 2021-22, the Scottish Government invested £740 million into colleges, which is projected to lead to a £8 billion boost to the Scottish economy, and a £2.8 billion boost to government revenues over the coming 40-year period. The analysis released today also discusses the important contribution colleges are making to the priorities for the Scottish economy.
UK marketing budgets set to rise
UK companies have moved from promotions to brand-building as main media budgets drive marketing spend. The latest IPA Bellwether Report did, however, find that adspend is predicted to fall in real terms until 2025. The Q3 report is based on a survey of around 300 UK-based companies and found that 21.1% of those questioned increased their total marketing spend in the first 3 months to October, 15.8% downgraded their budgets. This led to a net balance of +5.3% – this is the weakest quarter of marketing budget growth since the final quarter of 2022. While it has slowed, it does extend the current sequence of upward revisions to 10 successive quarters – this time, led by main media spend. This had a net balance of +7.4%, compared to -2.5% in the previous quarter. “As storm clouds gather over the UK economy, it’s encouraging to see total marketing budgets hold firm in expansion territory,” explained Joe Hayes, Principal Economist at S&P Global Market Intelligence, and author of the Bellwether Report. We saw last quarter that firms had become concerned by persistence of the cost-of-living crisis, which drove a record rise in sales promotions spending. In the latest quarter, however, firms have gone back to brand-building, with anecdotal evidence suggesting that this move has been made both defensively and offensively. With demand conditions coming under pressure, companies will have to position themselves strongly to stand out from their competitors.”
https://www.prolificnorth.co.uk/news/uk-marketing-budgets-set-to-rise/
New funding to bring cyber security research to market
Lancaster University is to lead a new £1.2m project which will see cutting-edge cyber security research transformed into real-world products. The new North West Cyber Security Connect for Commercialisation (NW CyberCom) project will see six universities capture the latest cyber security innovations. Together with entrepreneurs, investors, government and businesses, this knowledge will be transformed into innovative new products, services, and policy, to better protect consumers, businesses and UK infrastructure. Alongside Lancaster are the universities of Manchester, Salford, Liverpool, Manchester Metropolitan University, and the University of Central Lancashire. It will also be supported by Plexal, a Manchester-based innovation company helping businesses, startups, and industry to collaborate with government to help deliver national security and prosperity; Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and lead consultancy, CRSI. Funds for the project have been provided by Research England’s Connecting Capability Fund (CCF). NW CyberCom will draw on established partnerships with the National Cyber Force and GCHQ to develop an innovation ecosystem across the North West Cyber Corridor and provide bespoke training for university researchers focused on maximising commercialisation opportunities.
Innovate UK backed start-up to launch ‘ground-breaking’ digital marketplace
An Innovate UK-backed start-up will launch a ‘ground-breaking’ digital marketplace for 3D printable car parts. Autentica Car Parts, based at Sci-Tech Daresbury, Cheshire, has developed a platform that allows OEMs, such as car designers and manufacturers, to sell spare parts designs to authorised dealers, distributors, and repair centres. The first-of-its-kind solution enables Non-Fungible Tokens (NFT) backed blockchain-protected and certified design assets to be 3D printed on-demand locally. The Autentica platform will help design owners and Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) sell spare parts using NFTs to certify that a buyer is purchasing a genuine OEM replacement part, produced using 3D printing service locally on-demand. NFTs further help prevent IP infringement and sort out liability issues, enabling OEMs control over 3D printing service providers by streaming G-CODE tokens instead of 3D model files. Using funding from Innovate UK, the UK’s national innovation agency, the platform has been successfully tested with 500 customers, including OEMs and car dealers, and an international network of 600 3D-printing service providers. The platform, which was developed in partnership with the University of Sheffield Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (AMRC) and cloud technology company Oracle, enables instant access to spare car parts compared to the industry standard of 28 days, reduces non-production costs like storage by 70 per cent, and slashes the carbon footprint of transportation by 40 per cent.