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South Coast firms in the Tech Track 100
A University of Southampton spin-out company has become the leading private tech concern in the Solent area after racking up sales of over £8 million last year.
Symetrica is the only company in the region to make the top half of the latest Tech Track 100 league table, which ranks Britain’s 100 TMT companies with the fastest-growing sales over their latest three years of accounts.
The company designs and manufactures equipment used by customs and border protection agencies to identify materials that could be used in dirty bombs. Its patented technology can be found in hand-held detectors used by the likes of the US Department of Homeland Security, and in drive-through scanners at ports in Europe, the Middle East and Latin America.
Symetrica has raised £7m from investors including innovation charity Nesta since being founded in 2002, and now employs some 50 people. Led by chief executive Heddwyn Davies, it averaged annual sales growth of 91% to gain 43rd place in the national league table.
The listing follows the company’s successes last year in winning the Best Nuclear/Radiation Detection category of the GSN Airport, Seaport, Border Security Awards – which honour companies who deal with very serious national and international threats in land, sea and air – and also the ADS Security Innovation Award for its Discovery radiation portal monitors.
Ratio at Bournemouth was ranked 92nd in the country with sales of £8.7m in the past year (average annual growth 46%) from its price comparison website Choose Wisely, whose target customers are people with a poor credit history or none at all. It aims to make it simple for people to pick financial products.
It also provides software to power rival comparison services, while other offerings include Briefd, a men’s underwear subscription club, and Remora, an artificial intelligence tool that helps e-commerce websites to convert visitors into customers.
Founders Marc Biles and Tara Flynn spun the company out of the Richmond Group business incubator in 2013 and now employ some 20 people.
Petersfield-based Feefo (94th) was the only entry from the Solent area in last year’s table. Taking its title from an abbreviation of Feedback Forum, it collects consumer reviews for more than 3,500 brands including Paperchase, Expedia and Hiscox.
Clients use them to ensure that only genuine customers share their opinions, and a new feature means feedback requests can be personalised to enhance the client’s brand. In March the company announced a partnership with Autotrader to provide online car reviews for dealerships.
Founded in 2010, Feefo is led by founder Andrew Mabbutt, while Nick Wheeler – founder of Charles Tyrwhitt shirts – is its main investor. With a staff of 100, turnover grew to £8.1m this year which gave an annual growth of 45%.
THE BUSINESS MAGAZINE – NOVEMBER 2017
www.a sker ic
.co.uk City tops rise in job opportunities
New data from CV-Library, the UK’s leading independent job site, has revealed that Portsmouth experienced a job boom in the last quarter. The study, which compared Q3 job market data with that of the same period last year, found that Portsmouth witnessed a staggering 35.9% increase in advertised vacancies over the past 12 months. Far outpacing the national growth of 12.2%, Portsmouth made the list of the top 10 locations to find a job right now. Others include:
1 Portsmouth – 35.9% 2 Brighton – 33.3% 3 London – 25.8% 4 Bristol – 22.5% 5 Sheffield – 22.2% 6 Aberdeen – 20.6% 7 Edinburgh – 20.3% 8 Leeds – 14.7% 9 Manchester – 13.8% 10 Glasgow – 12.5%
Thomas Anthony Commercial Accountancy Services Ltd
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businessmag.co.uk
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