The Humber: a Hotbed of Digital Enterprise and Opportunity
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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.