Vets Now
Richard Dixon Founder and group managing director, 38
Type of business Out-of-hours veterinary care
Location Fife
Employees 350
Turnover £13m
Investment plans: With the proceeds from the sale of his flat, Dixon
founded Vets Now to employ dedicated vets and veterinary nurses to provide
out-of-hours and emergency care. The company now supports about 300
surgeries in 32 locations across the UK. The next steps, says Dixon, are in
two directions: he wants to develop plans to take the company into Europe,
and to provide other services to its customers, such as human resources and
recruitment.
Dixon, who worked as a vet in Glasgow in the 1990s, says that setting up Vets
Now was a “calculated risk - I saw that there was a great opportunity there,
and if it hadn’t worked out then I could always have gone back to being a
vet”.
Petrotechnics
Phil Murray Founder and CEO, 50
Type of business Software for hazardous industries
Location Aberdeen
Employees 172
Turnover £14m
Investment plans: Founded 19 years ago in a bedroom in Murray’s house,
Petrotechnics produces software that helps companies in the North Sea
identify potential hazards and risks in their working environment.
Previously employed at an international oil company, Murray was involved in a
road traffic accident and didn’t work for five years. “It gives you a sense
of priorities,” he says. He wants to raise investment capital to start a
global expansion programme and shift the business model to third-party
delivery channels and licensing. “We’re focused primarily on oil and gas,
but our product would work in any industry, including utilities, defence,
hazardous chemicals and so on,” he says.
Xodus Group
Colin Manson Managing director, 42
Type of business Oil and gas consultancy
Location Aberdeen
Employees 157
Turnover £14m
Investment plans: Three years ago, Manson and a colleague decided to
leave their jobs at the energy consultancy Genesis, after a failed
management buyout bid, and go it alone. “One of the key differentiators for
us was that whereas other companies start fairly small, we set out to be the
leading oil and gas consultancy in the world in five years,” he says. This
meant starting with a big advertising budget, a big office, more than
trebling the workforce in three years - it was very rapid growth. Financed
by share capital from their previous jobs, a bank overdraft and a private
investor, the entrepreneurs took a risk - but turnover is expected to double
from £14m next year.
The business wants to expand its newly opened London office, as well as
broaden in America and the Middle East, and possibly make an acquisition. It
also aims to increase investment in its products, including Xplore, a
production optimisation tool.
John Lawrie Group
Charlie Parker Financial director, 42
Type of business Metal recycling and supplies to the oil and gas industries
Location Aberdeen
Employees 100
Turnover £81m
Investment plans: While John Lawrie Group can trace its origins to the
1930s, when it was a scrap metal merchant, the company in its present form
dates from 1983, following a management buyout. With offices across the UK
and in the US, Canada, China and the Middle East, it still handles scrap
metal but also trades in new and reusable steel. It provides assistance to
the oil and gas, construction and utility industries in the such areas as
the decommissioning of oilfields and used equipment.
Another service helps customers clean up “norm” (naturally occurring
radioactive material). “A lot of product would get scrapped otherwise, so we
spent two and a half years coming up with a solution,” says Parker.
The company has earmarked part of its annual capital expenditure for the new
cleaning facility that will serve its customers in Scotland and the
northeast, and is hoping that the Entrepreneur Challenge might help too.
“It’s going to require a lot of resources,” says Parker, “but it’s going to
be a great solution to a huge problem for our customers.”
Shore Laminate Fabricators
Simon Howie Chairman, 41
Type of business Laminate manufacturer
Location Perth
Employees 84
Turnover £13
Investment plans: Originally from a farming background, Howie was
running a chain of butchers’ shops when he decided he was paying too much
for store panelling. Thus Shore Laminates was born and, says Howie, “pretty
soon we would be pricing for everything going in construction, including
Bristol and Heathrow airports”.
Founded in 1991, the group now consists of two holding companies and three
trading companies, having bought two of its biggest competitors, and is
developing other brands of its own. The secret of the company’s success,
says Howie, is making very strong brands with a low-cost manufacturing
process. If successful in the Challenge, he would like to make the process
even more “lean and efficient” and consider other acquisitions. Shore
Laminates will have to compete for attention with Howie’s other projects,
including commercial property, a dockyard company in Perth and an energy and
waste recycling business.
