RGF reaction: Hat-trick for Redx; Cygnet; N Brown’s textile mission

REDX Pharma, the Liverpool-based bio-medical group has again succeeded in winning funding support from the Regional Growth Fund.

Despite intense competition for a share of the fourth round of RGF, Redx, won support for a third time, making it one of, if not the most successful  bidders for the cash anywhere in England.

The latest venture will see it launch a a new research and development centre focused primarily on metabolic disease. Called Redx Metabolic it will create high-value drugs to combat conditions such as heart disease, arthritis and diabetes.

The latest RGF grant is subject to agreement of terms, completion of due diligence and signing of a binding offer letter by January 2014.   A final decision on progressing the project will be made by Redx the end of 2013.

Redx currently has operations in Liverpool, where its head office and Redx Oncology cancer research team are located, and at the BioHub facility at Alderley Park, Cheshire, where Redx Anti-Infectives is developing new drugs to combat antibiotic resistance.

Dr Neil Murray, chief executive of Redx Pharma, commented “The Regional Growth Fund has made a very real contribution to the growth of our business, and its endorsement of our plans has helped us attract substantial private sector investment.

“This latest award gives us another option as we seek to grow our overall business. Our immediate focus is on delivering revenues from partnerships with pharma customers as we position Redx at the forefront of the new R&D model emerging in the industry, helping us to create a sustainable business here in the North West.”

Redx Pharma was launched in 2010. The Metabolics venture will sit along Redx Anti-Infectives and Redx Oncology, which have both received RGF backing over the last two years.

Meanwhile Cygnet Group, the Cheshire manufacturing and engineering company, said it would use the RGF cash to accelerate its growth and investment plans.

Chief executive Matthew Kimpton-Smith said: “Being successful in our bid ultimately means we can bring forward work on our new 91,000 sq ft R&D, training, design, assembly and machinery testing facility and headquarters in Wincham.

“The new building will allow us to consolidate our business onto one site, with more space, greater efficiency, and better use of resources. This will improve our ability to take on larger projects and meet the demands of the burgeoning sectors of technical fibre and oil and gas that we supply to.

“It will support us greatly in our plans to double in size to a turnover of £50m in the next four years and beyond.”

One of the other successful bids will see a project to revive manufacturing in the textile sector in the North move forward.

The brain-child of peer Lord Alliance,(pictured below)  a programme bid from the business he used to chair, N Brown Group, received the green light from ministers.

The N Brown bid is on behalf of Greater Manchester, Lancashire and West Yorkshire and is specifically to drive investment into the textile manufacturing supply chain.

The bid comes on the back of a year long research project conducted by the Greater Manchester based Alliance Project, a national private sector funded not-for-profit organisation working with the Greater Manchester Combined Authorities.

The Alliance Project work has established that there is a viable business case for the repatriation of textile manufacturing to Britain.

Delivered from Greater Manchester, but covering west Yorkshire and Lancashire the RGF program fund will work with the Alliance Project and partners in all three regions.

The prime objective is to help create sustainable private sector jobs in some of the most impoverished and public sector dependent communities in the UK.   

The jobs created will include unskilled and semi-skilled entry level jobs – boosting opportunities for those currently outside the labour market – and skilled jobs in technology-rich occupations.

Paul Short, chair of the N Brown Group bid, said: “We want to thank Government for supporting the N Brown Group bid to drive investment in the textile supply chain in Britain.

“This is a recognition of the growth potential in textile manufacturing. Retailers are desperate to increase capacity in the UK and this investment fund will allow us as an industry to grow that capacity quicker than we would otherwise have been able.

“The current manufacturing base can’t keep pace with demand and this fund will allow us to invest in the micro companies that are the bedrock of an industry that last year was worth £9bn to the UK economy.”

Former MP Lorna Fitzsimons, director of The Alliance project, said: “I would personally like to thank Vince Cable for taking seriously the case of growth through investment in the UK’s textile manufacturing base. The industry has real potential to drive economic growth with increasing demand for UK manufacturing capacity from retailers and a huge increase in exports.

“The industry needs all the support they can get to help them meet this demand. This will also need a parallel investment in Skills from the Government with the research showing a huge crisis in skills and an ageing workforce. N Brown have taken a huge leadership role on behalf of the industry and without them this opportunity wouldn’t be possible.”