North West Business Briefs: Royal Liver Building; Collabco; Gateley; English Cities Fund; Globus Group

The Royal Liver Building will pay tribute to those who have lost their lives during the COVID-19 pandemic through a specially commissioned commemorative light display on the national day of reflection.

The display will take place on Tuesday, March 23, on the year anniversary of the first lockdown and is the latest in a series of light installations at Liverpool’s iconic landmark.

The display will be a tailored light show that will illuminate the exterior of the Royal Liver Building allowing people to pay their respects. It will highlight key memories in the UK from the pandemic and will include displays on themes such Hope, Gratitude, Reflection and Commemoration.

The show will require the installation of sequential colour-changing, featuring pandemic hero Sir Captain Tom walking around the building, the show will end with the building becoming a scene of flickering candles in remembrance. The display will run every hour between 7pm until 11pm and will be shown until March 28.

The display has been organised by CBRE Liverpool with Arup designing the show working alongside the light installers LITE.

::

Danish University, Københavns Professionshøjskole (University College Copenhagen) has chosen myday by Liverpool-based Collabco for its digital campus. It will offer a student portal and app to the 20,000 students, giving learners the ability to access information across any device, anytime, anywhere.

Collabco was specifically selected on the strength of its product and capabilities on mobile and browser as well as offering pilot access. Sales director, Daniel Taylor, said: “Collabco is delighted to announce our partnership with our first Danish customer.”

Louise Lindskov, project manager at Københavns Professionshøjskole, said. “We were looking at building a solution like myday from scratch but having spoken to Collabco at Online Educa Berlin (OEB) we saw the potential and that we could achieve something much quicker.

“Students needed to have a place to find key information from all of the systems. We hadn’t had a mobile app before and myday offered us this as well as our main criteria – being able to test the system.

“We also liked that Collabco always gave us the time we needed and came to see us in person. We have already built up a good working relationship and we look forward to building upon it.”

::

The Manchester office of Gateley Legal has advised top tier British professional basketball team, the Manchester Giants, on a sponsor licence for players from outside the UK.

As just under half of the team are US nationals, the Giants approached Gateley Legal for immigration support in applying for permission to sponsor the athletes before the start of the season in October 2020, and in view of the delays caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the team needed to work quickly to ensure each US player was sponsored.

Gateley Legal also assisted the Giants with applying for extensions to visa applications for the players in January this year. Employment legal director, Rizwana Ishaq led on the matter, with support from paralegal, Daniela Notarpippo.

Rizwana said: “We regularly support sports teams and individual athletes with UK immigration and have been working hard to ensure that famous faces are able to return to the court, the pitch and the track.”

The Manchester office of Gateley Legal regularly works on a number of sports law-related cases, including matters on licensing and brands, commercial contracts, reputation management and immigration.

::

Construction work has now completed on the Government’s 157,000 sq ft Greater Manchester hub, Three New Bailey. The entire office building was pre-let in March 2018 on a 25-year lease to HMRC, bringing thousands of jobs to the region.

Located next to Salford Central station, the state-of-the-art BREEM ‘excellent’ building spans seven storeys and has been designed by Make architects and built by Bowmer & Kirkland. JLL and Cushman and Wakefield are joint letting agents.

HMRC is leading the delivery of Phase 1 of the Manchester Government Hub and will now progress with the office fit out to create a modern, agile working environment for the 2,400 civil servants from HMRC and other government departments who will be based at Three New Bailey.

The wider New Bailey scheme has continued to thrive over the past 12 months, despite the challenges associated with the pandemic. The English Cities Fund recently started on site at Four New Bailey which will be the home to telecommunications giant BT, with sister building Two New Bailey Square, and 199 homes at the third and final phase of The Slate Yard completing safely and in line with government guidelines.

Phil Mayall, regional director at The English Cities Fund, said: “We certainly haven’t taken our foot off the accelerator this year and following Two New Bailey Square’s completion at the end of 2020, it’s fantastic to see another commercial office building completed and we look forward to officially welcoming HMRC and other government departments to their new home in early 2022.”

::

International PPE (personal protective equipment) firm Globus Group has created an innovative sustainable solution for personal protective equipment waste by recycling off-cuts from mask production into cleaning materials for hospitals.

The Trafford Park company, the biggest British PPE manufacturer, is already keeping hundreds of thousands of NHS professionals safe as they lead the fight against the COVID pandemic. Now it is has come up with an ingenious way of using by-products of manufacturing to help maintain vital hospital hygiene.

It has announced a partnership with Spill Defence Manufacturing to turn scrap material from respirator manufacturing into absorbent, disposable mop heads or ‘socks’. The innovation means more than 40,000 kgs of PPE offcuts are now being recycled each month from production at the group’s three Alpha Solway factories in Golborne, and Dumfries and Annan in Scotland. This will double over the next few months as Spill Defence increases output.

The cleaning products are distributed to hospitals around the UK and used to keep operating theatres clean and hygienic. The PPE off-cuts can also be recycled into spill kits and booms used across a wide range of industries.

Last summer Globus won contracts with the Department of Health and Social Care and the Scottish Government to ensure frontline NHS staff have high quality PPE throughout the pandemic and beyond which triggered a huge recruitment drive, and Globus is on track to hire more than 1,000 staff by the end of 2021.