First glimpse of tomorrow’s star performers
April 2006 - THE DAILY TELEGRAPH
Top 18 fastest growing UK companies
| Company | 2005 Turnover | % Incr. |
Region | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Assima Ltd | £9m | 796 | London |
| 2 | Kew Green Hotels Ltd | £26.9m | 398 | London |
| 3 | Inforsense Ltd | £1.8m | 218 | London |
| 4 | AIGIS Blast Protection Ltd | £1.7m | 150 | East Midlands |
| 5 | Powerlase Ltd | £2.4m | 140 | South East |
| 6 | XPD Ltd (Clic2business) | £2.7m |
130 | London |
| 7 | Two Way Media Ltd | £8m | 129 | London |
| 8 | Differentis Ltd | £6.1m | 129 | South East |
| 9 | Metapack Ltd | £1.8m | 113 | London |
| 10 | One Small Step One Giant Leap Ltd | £1.8m | 112 | London |
| 11 | World Golf Systems Group Plc | £1.9m | 112 | East of England |
| 12 | Job Partners Ltd | £5.3m | 106 | London |
| 13 | Infrared Integrated Systems Ltd (IRISYS) | £6.6m | 106 | East Midlands |
| 14 | Proactis Group Ltd (Get Real Systems) | £1.9m | 105 | Yorkshire and the Humber |
| 15 | Open Business Exchange Ltd (OB 10) | £1.8m | 105 | London |
| 16 | Gyro International Ltd | £18.1m | 101 | London |
| 17 | DCG Datapoint Group Ltd | £5.1m | 98 | South East |
| 18 | Liguidlogic Ltd | £3.5m | 96 | Yorkshire and the Humber |
Blast Protection is a success outside UK
Aigis Blast Protection
David Lawrence and Nico Rogerson
Sales £681,000 in 2004 to £1.7m in 2005
Profitable – break-even
The French gendarme is Aigis Blast Protection’s biggest customer. The Derby based firm has designed a clever new material that can absorb explosive blasts and as the French police carry grenades in their vans when they head into battle, they could see the potential upside from buying Aigis’s products.
The British Government has been less forthcoming, although the Bank of England has one of the boxes to put suspected letter bombs in. Marketing director David Lawrence is a little frustrated. “We found it extremely difficult to get the British Government to take us seriously.” he says.
Mr Lawrence, a former vice-chairman of advertising agency Dorland (now part of Saatchi Group), teamed up with Nico Rogerson, co-founder of financial PR firm Dewe Rogerson (now Citigate), to invest in Aigis five years ago. They saw the potential of the technology developed by materials specialist David Christian. Aigis now has explosion containment boxes in hundreds of airports around the world and has installed a blast protected room for a multi-national oil company to protect their Riyad office from suicide attacks.
Mr Lawrence says the Government’s research and development tax credits have helped while still in development mode – the credits can be paid in cash. But he’s more critical of overseas trading support. Nevertheless, having secured £2m from Foresight Ventures last September, Aigis is focusing on international expansion. “More than 90 percent of sales in the last year are overseas,” says Mr Lawrence. They are exhibiting at the airport infrastructure trade show in Dubai this year, but have turned down government subsidiaries as they are to appearing in the British pavilion. “We don’t want to look like a British business. It’s important to us to look like a global technology business, and not a bunch of little Englanders,” he says.
