The London Stock Exchange Group has published 1000 Companies to Inspire Britain, a celebration of some of the fastest-growing and most dynamic small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the UK.
Food and Beverages features strongly, with 50 companies represented including well known companies such as Brasserie Blanc, Brewdog, Harbour & Jones, Pie Minister, Richoux Group, Wasabi, NakedWines.com, and Young’s Brewery.
As well as identifying 1,000 companies, the report examines in detail the opportunities and challenges facing SMEs and looks at the sectors and trends that will shape the future of the UK economy.
Consistently outperforming sector peers
1000 Companies to Inspire Britain is a landmark report that identifies some of the UK’s most exciting and dynamic small and medium-sized enterprises. The result is a list of companies that have not only performed strongly since 2009 – an exceptionally challenging period – but have also consistently outperformed their sector peers.
‘Gazelle’ companies
The term SME describes a very broad church of businesses, from the high-street greengrocer to the high-tech manufacturer and exporter. Within this group of more than 4.5 million UK companies there is an exciting subset of fast-growing, dynamic businesses. These “gazelle” companies, as the CBI calls them, or the “vital six per cent”, as think-tank Nesta describes them, are of exceptional importance to UK economic growth and job creation.
It is almost exclusively these companies that have generated new, net job creation in the UK since the financial crisis. The public sector has shrunk and while large-caps are recovering, their hiring has not. Gazelle companies, post-2007, are proving to be the lifeblood of the UK economy.
Celebrating the success of these SMEs is a shockingly under-reported story and the LSE group is determined to change that. 1000 Companies to Inspire Britain seeks, for the first time, to identify 1,000 of the most exciting small and medium-sized companies in the UK.
The list of businesses reveals that the UK is a diverse economy, with companies from more than 100 sectors ranging from architecture and automotive, to venture capital and wine. Encouragingly, these companies come from every UK region.
The full searchable database can be found online at www.1000companies.com