Stories

Africa Al’s is an award-winning West-African sauces, cooking pastes and chilli dip manufacturer, founded by a husband-and-wife team in the heart of Stockport.

CAPSLOCK is an educational organisation that delivers career-changing cyber security bootcamps, entirely online. They help adults reskill through a curriculum that is built in collaboration with some of the UK’s largest cyber employers.

When Collctiv, a Manchester fintech, saw demand for its payment app skyrocket, the team knew they needed funding to keep up with its soaring popularity. With our help it secured a £200,000 investment to invest in its app structure and marketing efforts, and has since processed over £3m in payments.

Trafford-based Just Bee originally made fruity water drinks infused with honey. Securing £450,000 with our support, the businesses switched to selling vitamin honey in 2020 due to falling sales during the pandemic. Despite these challenges, we helped the business to grow rapidly – now more than triple its original size.

Membr is a fitness software platform, that is used by thousands of gyms worldwide. With the business looking to expand into new regions, we helped Membr access the funds it needed to achieve its goals. Having accessed and repaid three loans totalling £400,000 from the GM Export Fund Membr has been able to develop its product offering and expand into a range of new international markets.

University of Manchester (UoM) spin-out company, Molymem, develops and commercialises technology to improve existing water filtration membranes, for separation applications in a variety of markets, including purification and removal of pollutants.