Merry Christmas from IW Capital
As the year draws to a close, all of us here at IW Capital would like to take this opportunity to wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
2018 has been a notable year for IW Capital’s portfolio companies, one that has seen a raft of standout milestones that serve as testament to the exemplary entrepreneurial talent driving our private sector forward. Equally, it’s been a great year for IW Capital, having launched our debt fund, and raised vital growth finance across all of the businesses we support. As we move into 2019, and what will be the 25thyear since the inception of EIS, we will continue to source and nurture world-class enterprise talent, supporting the best of the UK’s business leaders for a resilient and future facing SME economy.
This year has also seen us continue to support charities, such as the Felix project. All of the team spent a day helping to package and distribute food donated by supermarkets to those in need.
The Felix Project was founded in early 2015 to help families and children that are struggling to afford food. 1.9 million tonnes of avoidable food waste is generated by the UK food industry each year. At the same time food poverty is a huge and growing problem, almost 4 million children in the UK live in households that struggle to afford to buy enough fruit, vegetables, fish and other healthy foods.
With Brexit coming up, 2019 could be a transformative year for the UK and SMEs are going to be key to the success of the economy moving forward. As SMEs account for 98% of all private sector business their ability to grow and thrive is more closely linked to the economy as a whole. These small businesses contribute £1.9trillion annually to the economy of the UK, so it is easy to see that a correlation between the sector and the economy will exist. SMEs employ around 16 million people around the country, this represents almost half of the employment in the UK.
In 2019, IW Capital is keen to help SMEs that need assistance to plan for the future and find the right kind of investment in order to help them reach the next level.