Innovator of the Year Awards: Manchester

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The Spectator

News Commentary, News, Daily News, Society & Culture

4.4 • 785 Ratings

🗓️ 9 October 2022

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This year’s regional podcast series for The Spectator’s Economic Innovator of the Year Awards kicked off with news of a fascinating lunch at The Ivy Cafe in Manchester.

We invited four finalists for the North West region — out of a record total of 176 across the whole of the UK — to pitch their ventures to our distinguished panel of judges. The finalists you’ll hear about on this podcast are: LoveRaw which makes vegan chocolate; Ordo which makes electric toothbrushes; Interact, which drives energy efficiency in data centres and IT systems; and Better2Know, which provides sexual health testing services.

The judges were Gabriel Fysh, whose company Transcend Packaging, in South Wales, is one of our former winners in this region; private equity and venture capital investor Steve Morris; and Richard Greenhalgh and Michelle White representing our sponsor, the wealth manager and investment bank Investec.

The judges faced the tough task of comparing businesses in very different sectors and stages of development. But all four made compelling pitches — and the variety of entries is part of the fun of these Awards.

We hope all the companies we meet gain from the networking opportunities, benefit from the accolade of being selected as finalists and enjoy the buzz, the conversation and the lunch. We hope Spectator readers and podcast listeners also enjoy following the search for this year’s ultimate winners — and will take a few minutes to explore the finalists' websites and products.

More Economic innovator of the Year Awards podcasts coming shortly!

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to the Spectator's Economic Innovator of the Year awards for 2022.
0:11.1	I'm Martin Van der Weir, business editor of The Spectator,
0:14.7	and it's my pleasure to introduce in this first of our podcast series,
0:20.5	this year's Northwest Region finalists from Manchester,
0:25.8	where we lunched at the glittering Ivy Cafe, which, apart from its beautiful decor,
0:34.6	also has rather loud background music.
0:37.5	So you may hear a little of that on this podcast as well as our voices.
0:42.2	We met four regional finalists,
0:45.9	each had a roughly 15-minute slot to talk to us
0:49.6	and answer questions from our panel of judges.
0:52.7	So the four companies we met for this event were Ordo,
0:58.4	which makes electric toothbrushes,
1:01.8	Love Raw, which makes indulgent vegan chocolate,
1:06.6	Better to Know,
1:08.2	which is in the business of sexual health testing services, and interact,
1:15.6	which is all about energy efficiency in data centres and computer systems. So, as ever,
1:24.4	an extraordinary range of businesses for our judges to assess in just a few minutes each.
1:31.0	But that's the fun of these awards.
1:33.4	Our panel of judges today were Steve Morris, who is a private equity and venture capital investor,
1:42.0	Gabriel Feisch, an investor who, one of whose companies, Transcend Packaging
1:47.7	in South Wales, was a former regional winner of our awards and representing InvestTech, our sponsors,
1:57.0	Richard Greenhouse and Michelle White, now a veteran of these events, having done the whole tour
	...

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