The Humber: A hotbed of digital enterprise and opportunity

Welcome to the Humber

Hull and the Humber is experiencing an economic, social and cultural renaissance, generating renewed confidence and unprecedented levels of investment.

Over £1bn is currently being invested in bringing high tech, innovation and R&D projects to the region across sectors as diverse as healthcare, renewable energy and digital. This investment represents a step change in the Humber economy – the Humber is changing rapidly, offering a low cost base and new opportunities for investors and innovators.

Major investments in digital connectivity are giving the Humber outstanding connection speeds and coverage. Hull- based KCOM’s ultrafast fibre broadband service will be available to more than 150,000 homes and businesses by December 2017 and the region also has one of the UK’s quickest and most efficient public sector-funded rollouts of superfast connectivity.

In 2017 Hull will be the UK City of Culture, heralding a year-long celebration of culture and creativity. The region’s vibrant and rapidly-growing tech sector will play a major part in Hull’s creative rebirth.

Based around the Centre for Digital Innovation (C4DI), a £15m private sector-funded technology hub in Hull, our vibrant start-up community is making waves by partnering with companies such as Siemens, PwC, Associated British Ports, Smith & Nephew and RB on corporate innovation programmes.

The region’s digital credentials are built on solid foundations – we don’t have household names, but we’ve got the biggest tech companies you’ve never heard of. There is a strong talent pool, the infrastructure and connectivity to support investment and abundant capacity for future growth.

Why the Humber?

Use some of the following stats as an infographic

 Fibre connectivity using KCOM stats – Hull is the UK’s ultrafast broadband capital. 100,000 businesses and homes connected to ultrafast fibre broadband; over 4,000 kms of fibre laid across the region.  Home to one of the UK’s leading tech hubs, housing 17 growing digital companies, with a member of over 230 co- workers and providing resources, support and events to a wider freelance and start-up community of over 1,100.  Skills and talent – The Department of Computer Science at the University of Hull is rated equal 5th out of all 89 UK computer science departments in terms of its “impact” on the UK economy, according to the UK’s Research Excellence Framework ranking. Good or Outstanding further and higher education provision across the region closely aligned to the needs of local industry. Ron Dearing University Technical College specialising in digital technology and mechatronics.  The average price of industrial space is 34% lower in the Humber than the average for England, while the average cost of office space is 63% lower in the Humber than the average for England. The average cost of a detached house in the Humber is £190,414 compared to the UK average of £329,600, meaning employees get so much more for their money.  City of Culture investment and legacy – use visitor and investment stats below but not EZ statement:

Location and lifestyle

The Humber offers an exceptional combination of location and lifestyle.

The region is equidistant between London and Edinburgh and is the gateway to Europe, with the Humber ports being the UK’s busiest trading complex.

Hull has eight direct rail services daily to London, arriving in just over two and a half hours, with even more direct services to Doncaster, York, Leeds, Sheffield, Manchester and Liverpool.

Three flights a day operate to and from Humberside International Airport to Amsterdam Schiphol Airport, with connections to more than 800 destinations worldwide.

The region also provides an unbeatable blend of high quality of life and low cost of living. People relocating to the area have a great choice of places to live from the bustling city of Hull – the 2017 UK City of Culture – to attractive market towns, villages in the Yorkshire or Lincolnshire Wolds, or coastal communities. From cosmopolitan city, to rolling countryside or rugged coast, the Humber has it all.

Our companies

The Humber is home to many market-leading companies that have leveraged technology to achieve remarkable growth and are leading the way in digital innovation. They include:

Sonoco Trident

Founded in Hull 20 years ago, Sonoco Trident is the world’s fastest-growing and most innovative digital brand management business. It has achieved growth averaging 30% annually for two decades.

Sonoco Trident now employs 650 people worldwide at 22 sites, almost half of them at its Hull headquarters, and has a blue-chip client roster of many of the world’s biggest and most admired brand owners including P&G (Procter & Gamble), Unilever, L’Oreal, RB, Coca-Cola and Diageo.

Press Association

The Press Association (PA), the UK and Ireland’s national news agency, is a significant employer in the region, with around 400 staff at its purpose-built operations centre in Howden, East Yorkshire. From there, PA provides content, data and media services to traditional and digital media outlets, supported by KCOM connectivity.

Technology and connectivity are of critical importance, enabling PA to process and distribute time-critical content to its customers. For instance, horse racing data can be delivered to betting customers with sub-second latency and real-time data feeds can be ingested from events such as the Rio Olympics for distribution to a global client base including the likes of MSN and AOL.

KCOM KCOM is a Hull-based communications and IT services provider employing 1,800 people. Nationally it serves large enterprises like HMRC, which need bespoke technology solutions to help them run their organisations more efficiently and securely and improve the experience they deliver to their customers. In Hull and East Yorkshire KCOM provides phone, broadband and other communications services to more than 140,000 residential and 8,000 business customers. In 2012 KCOM began rolling out ultrafast fibre to the premises broadband across its Hull and East Yorkshire network. By the end of 2017 KCOM’s Lightstream network will be available to 150,000 homes and businesses.

ESP

Hull-based ESP is a market leader in smartcard technology, with clients such as Transport for London, the Association of Train Operating Companies and the Scottish Government.

ESP’s technology helps major transport operators and cities deliver excellent customer service today and design mobility services for the future. The company, which also has offices in Scotland and Germany, has issued over 40 million smart cards, including Transport for London’s Oyster Cards.

Summit Media

Summit Media was launched in 2000 and has grown to a £47m turnover business from three locations, including its head office at Willerby, East Yorkshire. The retail specialist has transformed the online offerings of a host of blue chip clients including Jaguar Land Rover, Peugeot, Argos and RB. Summit developed the state-of-the-art marketing intelligence platform Forecaster which draws data from a diverse range of sources and applies complex statistical models to predict sales from any given online marketing spend.

In September 2016 Summit was acquired by TCC Global, a leading, worldwide retail marketing company with revenues of over £500m. Summit’s established brand and management team will remain in place as the companies develop a new generation of digitally-led marketing programmes for retailers.

Label Worx

Based at Hull’s C4DI tech hub, Label Worx is the world’s largest digital distributor of dance and electronic music to iTunes, Beatport, Spotify, Amazon, Google Play and more.

The company provides tools, services and software for independent record labels to run their business anywhere in the world. The founders say operating costs are 50 per cent of what they would be in London, enabling the company to grow faster.

Opportunity focus: Connectivity

The Humber offers outstanding connection speeds and coverage, including the UK’s most concentrated cluster of fibre connected homes and businesses receiving consistent speeds of one gigabit. As the only UK city where ultrafast broadband is being made available as standard, Hull is already the nation’s ultrafast capital.

There are more ultrafast connections in Hull than any other city in the country, connecting into a network of 4,000km of fibre laid across the region. More than 4,000 local businesses are connected to ultrafast services from Hull-based communications provider KCOM, realising a competitive advantage and, equally as important, developing services and applications that take advantage of this state-of-the-art connectivity.

Take-up rates for KCOM’s Lightstream fibre broadband network are at 50% among businesses and 44% for residential customers, both well ahead of other superfast broadband rollouts. This creates a unique opportunity for innovative companies to prototype and market test products and services which will be designed around the next generation of connectivity.

Over £25m has been invested in super-fast broadband in East Yorkshire and Northern Lincolnshire under the Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) programme, dramatically improving coverage and connection speeds across the region. 97% of premises in Northern Lincolnshire will have the ability to access to superfast broadband by 2017 and further funding has already been secured to take coverage up to 99%.

The Humber is home to a high number of companies that depend on the region’s excellent connectivity to deliver real-time products and services to customers around the globe. The region is beginning to attract interest from data centre providers due to its excellent levels of connectivity, low cost base and latent market demand. One such development is the Yorkshire Energy Park, a proposed major strategic development underpinned by affordable energy and data security provided by co-located energy and data centres.

Opportunity focus: Health and social care

The NHS in England is facing an unprecedented financial challenge following the longest period of constrained funding it has ever faced. It is widely acknowledged the NHS is facing a funding gap of £30 billion by 2020/21, with £8billion promised by the Government and a further £22 billion expected to come from efficiency savings.

The use of technology is a key enabler to reduce the funding gap. The NHS has identified £1 billion in capital funding and £400 million in revenue spending to deliver health services digitally over the next five years. The Humber has the ingredients to expand the region’s digital health sector and contribute significantly to the nation’s healthcare challenges.

The Humber has experienced significant investments in R&D capability in health and care, including:

• RB Centre for Scientific Excellence: A £105m investment in a new global R&D centre in Hull – the largest single capital investment in the company’s history. The facility will be RB’s biggest healthcare development centres anywhere in the world, fusing together world-class science and technology to enable RB to remain a world leader in consumer healthcare. The centre will include a health development facility to support the creation and testing of cutting-edge consumer health innovations, a new suite of laboratories and a pilot plant for scale-up studies and preparation of clinical trial material. • University of Hull Health Hub: The development of a new Health Campus at the University of Hull will bring together the Hull/York Medical School with the Faculty of Health and Social Care and establish a new Institute for Clinical and Applied Health Research. • The University of Hull Allam Medical Building: A specialised medical teaching facility, including a full mock hospital ward, operating theatre and intensive care nursing facilities. • Smith & Nephew’s development of advanced wound management, orthopaedic reconstruction and sports medicine.

In addition, support is also available from the Yorkshire and Humber Academic Health Sciences Network to obtain external funding and investment to unlock innovation implementation within the NHS.

The Humber region’s health and social care organisations have a track record of supporting R&D and want to work with companies to develop digital healthcare solutions.

Leaders in digital healthcare The Humber is home to world-leading heath and care sector companies, offering access to talent, expertise and innovation facilities.

RB (formerly Reckitt Benckiser) is a FTSE Top 15 company and a leading employer in Hull with around 1,200 people, and growing, working in technical functions and innovation. To meet ambitious growth plans, the company has made its biggest ever capital investment of £105m in Hull, building a Centre for Scientific Excellence. A global leader in consumer healthcare, RB is transforming into a connected company, focusing on digital technology in health. This provides an excellent opportunity for established tech companies and start-ups in the region to partner with RB to deliver digital innovation to global markets powered by RB’s global brands.

Smith & Nephew’s Advanced Woundcare division has its headquarters in Hull, where the company employs around 900 people. The site manufactures advanced woundcare products and undertakes significant R&D activities.

The Novartis Group of companies provides innovative healthcare solutions that address the evolving needs of patients and societies. Novartis Pharma Chemical Operations in Grimsby is a 230-acre manufacturing site contributing to the worldwide supply of pharmaceutical substances for the business. Over the past 10 years, Novartis has invested £333 million in the Grimsby site, where it will produce the active ingredient for a new heart failure treatment.

Communications provider KCOM has developed an extensive range of services to support home-based independent living and self-care. The internet-enabled services include movement sensors that alert a call centre or carer if unusual activity (or inactivity) occurs and cold alarms – wireless devices that send an alert when the temperature falls below a predetermined threshold in the homes of people at risk from the cold, including older people and those with long-term health problems.

Vertual Ltd is the leading provider of virtual reality training systems in radiation therapy and is located in Hull. The company’s VERT system has been adopted throughout England following recommendations from the National Radiotherapy Advisory Group and the Department of Health’s Cancer Reform Strategy There are currently VERT systems at 12 universities and over 35 radiotherapy teaching hospitals in the UK.

A pipeline of tech talent

The digital economy in the Humber is well supported by skills provision within the region, led by the University of Hull. The Department of Computer Science at the University of Hull was recently rated equal 5th out of all 89 UK computer science departments in terms of its “impact” on the UK economy, according to the UK’s Research Excellence Framework ranking. The University of Hull produces over 200 exceptional computer science graduates each year, ensuring digital businesses have a strong pipeline of talent.

The University of Hull is also working with several University Technical Colleges and their industry partners in providing potential projects for students at the pre-university stage of the digital skills pipeline. The Humber UTC in Scunthorpe, sponsored by the University of Hull, offers an engineering and technology based curriculum prioritising higher level study of maths, sciences, engineering and computer science.

Furthermore, the university is a sponsor of the Ron Dearing UTC in Hull, which will specialise in digital technology and mechatronics – a combination of mechanical engineering, computing and electronics as used in the design and development of manufacturing techniques. The Ron Dearing UTC, which is due to open in September 2017, aims to enable local young people to thrive in the digital economy and provide employers with the advanced technical skills they require. The UTC has teamed up with C4DI, Hull’s digital hub, to develop the next generation of tech talent. In addition, the Humber’s further and higher education colleges offer a complementary range of digital capabilities and curriculum specialisms.

THE FOLLOWING PARAGRAPH NEEDS TO BE CONVERTED INTO A GRAPHIC ILLUSTRATING THE DIGITAL STRENGTHS OF THE REGION’S COLLEGES.

Further and Higher Education Colleges across the region have invested heavily in digital skills. North Lindsey College in Scunthorpe has invested in equipment and software to enable the College to realign its curriculum across further and higher education to meet the needs of the creative digital sector. The College now offers a level 3 programme which bridges the gap between creative computing and arts, combining aspects of programming at a basic level with creative design approaches. Bishop Burton College, one of the UK’s leading land based colleges, has developed a Sustainable Technologies Centre, including a bespoke IT suite offering virtual labs for construction and engineering and training in the use of drone technology in precision agriculture. Hull College has made digital skills a major priority, through its Digital Manifesto, and has been working with employers to develop a range of digital apprenticeships. On the south bank, Academy Grimsby – part of Grimsby Institute delivering learning to 14 to 16- year-olds – will include a digital academy from September 2015 to inspire and equip young people in North East Lincolnshire to aim for careers in the growing creative and digital sectors.

The Humber Local Enterprise Partnership is committed to developing a skilled and productive workforce for the growing digital sector. In addition to investments in digital skills across the education system, the LEP leads a package of initiatives to make it easy for businesses to engage with schools, colleges and other skills providers. This package includes support for businesses to take on apprentices, grants for businesses to train existing staff and projects bringing employers together with schools to influence digital skills provision from an early stage.

A connected digital community

Hull and the Humber has one of the most connected digital communities in the UK, with strong links into the general business community and national tech networks.

The spectacular C4DI tech hub is the Humber’s digital flagship. Developed by Hull-based regeneration company Wykeland Group, with support from KCOM, Sonoco Trident, the University of Hull and the Hull Digital network of tech specialists, the £15m building has provided a powerful focal point the local tech community and accelerated the growth of the region’s burgeoning digital sector.

C4DI has a simple mission – to help tech start-ups grow and big businesses innovate by using technology more efficiently. C4DI’s fast-growing co-working community of more than 230 digital specialists are developing projects for more than 30 member businesses, including global organisations such as Siemens and RB.

C4DI provides a collaborative environment where people in the tech sector – and businesses that seek to harness the power of digital technology – can think, work, share ideas and, ultimately, develop innovations to shape our future world.

A substantial attraction to start-ups based in C4DI is the ready supply of like-minded technical and business specialists with their extensive network of contacts, both with local industry and large national organisations. C4DI supports start-ups through mentoring and guidance, access to free advice from professional services companies and business support organisations, credits and expertise from technology companies such as Google and Amazon and access to pre-seed funding from investors experienced at supporting the growth of technology companies.

C4DI houses regular meetups for the wider technology and business community. Groups such as Hull Digital, Amazon Web Services, the Hull Hardware Group and many more have run over 130 meet-ups involving more than 1300 members of the community. Hull is a member of the TechNorth programme, which aims to promote and develop digital technology as a key element of the North of England’s current and future economy, and is helping plan its future activities and strategy.

Hull is also a member of the TechCity UK Cluster Alliance that connects London’s TechCity centre with digital hubs across the regions. These partnerships provide Humber tech businesses with access to valuable talent and contacts.

Doing business in the Humber

The Centre for Cities Small Business Outlook, which measures how small and medium sized businesses are performing in cities, ranks Hull 9th out of 64 in the UK for SMEs that adopt “high growth strategies” – competing on quality rather than price; pursuing innovation; investing in training; and offering customised goods and services. Businesses locating in the Humber benefit from lower land and property prices. The average price of industrial space is 34% lower in the Humber than the average for England and the average price of office space is 63% lower in the Humber than the average for England Salary rates remain competitive, with median gross pay 9% lower in the Humber than the rest of England. Property prices are also appealing. The average cost of a detached house in the Humber is £190,414 compared to the UK average of £329,600, meaning employees get so much more for their money.

Investing in the Humber

We and our partners will work alongside you every step of the way to help make your investment here a success. We can help to:

 Identify and secure financial assistance.  Identify and secure new premises or a development site, including helping you secure planning consent.  Support you in preparing your business case.  Find the right people with the right skills.  Connect you to a thriving business network.  Find out more about living in the area.  Find opportunities in international markets.  Connect you to the right training providers, supply chain partners, and specialists in the public sector who can support you, such as local authorities and UK Trade and Investment.