Published: November 1st, 2023
Expert business support and help with growth is now on offer to manufacturing SMEs in the Shropshire Council area thanks to a new programme.
Run by Oxford Innovation Advice on behalf of Shropshire Council, the Shropshire Manufacturing Growth Programme will use funding from the UK Shared Prosperity Fund (UKSPF) to provide high-quality business support services to help SMEs to grow by identifying, understanding and removing their barriers to growth.
It will boost the region’s economy by helping businesses improve their productivity, competitiveness and sustainability, and to create jobs or adopt new products or services.
Support will be tailored to each business with advice from a dedicated, experienced manufacturing growth manager and using a comprehensive business diagnostic tool, developed by Oxford Innovation Advice, called GROWTHmapper.
Guided by their local growth manager, businesses will undertake a diagnostic assessment of their needs and develop a tailored action plan setting out short, medium and long term improvement goals.
These action plans will provide manufacturers with clear areas of improvement. They can then get grant funding for up to 40 per cent of the cost of implementing an improvement project with an external expert.
As well as providing hands-on business support, the programme will connect the SMEs with wider support opportunities to maximise their growth potential.
A previous round of the Manufacturing Growth Programme, funded by the European Regional Development Fund, resulted in more than 70 businesses within Shropshire receiving bespoke support and grants to implement an improvement project.
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