Bradford's Growth in Creative and Digital Industries
A RECENT survey by Yorkshire Forward, the former regional development agency, showed that the sector recorded the strongest growth of all seven of its priority business clusters and is set to increase by more than 50% in the ten years up until 2015. In practice, this means the sector is set to overtake engineering to becomes the area’s biggest sector by output.
Indeed, the region has one of the most rapidly growing CDI sectors in Europe and is already employing around 100,000 people, with a GDP GDP of £10.5 billion. The sector is broad and includes activities such as electronics, microwave, software applications, web design, film making, games development and animation. As the home to many of these companies, Bradford is coming to be seen as the new capital of northern creativity, playing host to more than 1,200 CDI firms employing around 11,600 people.
And because many companies have also chosen the city to base their headquarter operations, there are large numbers of individuals employed in their design and marketing departments. In particular, local high profile retail, greeting card, utilities and home shopping companies employ significant numbers of staff in their creative and digital departments.
Despite the economic downturn, many of the CDI companies based in Bradford are bucking the global trend as more and more people choose to stay in with digital entertainment rather then venturing outside. Bradford-based Pace Plc's recent purchase of American company 2Wire for £307m makes it the largest manufacturer set top boxes in the world. Indeed, the technology developer has recently announced its intention to further develop its global presence as it pursues its vision for the converged digital home in the pay-on-demand market. As such, the company has recently added the Belfast based market-leader, Latens Systems, to its portfolio of companies for a sum in the region of £28.7m
In 1999 the American company, EchoStar, acquired Bradford based Eldon Technologies, which has subsequently become an essential field engineering office for the EchoStar family and, since 2007, the headquarters of their European operations.
Other local success-stories include a West Yorkshire security company which has been one of the first to introduce technology that allows business or domestic users to access their CCTV systems directly from a mobile phone or tablet computer. Keybury Fire & Security has introduced the new state-of-the-art software, which is compatible with Smartphones such as Apple iPhones, iPad, iPod Touch and Android mobiles.
Patrick Beebe, operations director of Keybury, commented: “It quite literally allows users to tap into their CCTV cameras live and check that all is safe and sound at their business premises – or their homes if they are away. It even works from abroad.”
He added, “Importantly, if customers connected to monitoring centres receive notification via their mobiles of an incident, they can view the scene immediately and respond accordingly, either by visiting their premises in person or alerting police. Real-time photographs can also be taken, which can be e-mailed as proof of suspicious activity, as well as being retained to give a log of the date and time of a recorded incident.”
Another pioneering Bradford-based company has recently gone to market with a device to securely connect computers to the Internet. Exa Networks, based at Cottingley Business Park has developed the “Exa Static 3G”, which combines three capabilities to allow computers to work remotely to access the Internet without being connected by a phone or broadband line.
The product also enables wireless computers to connect to an organisation’s internal computer network. Exa Networks is targeting firms in the construction and security sectors, as well as schools and other academic institutions.
The company, which employs 16 staff, specialises in IT connectivity, networking and specialist software for businesses and the education sector, was founded in 2003.
Managing director Mark Cowgill said: “We’re very proud of Exa Static 3G. In the IT world it’s a real breakthrough which can be put to good use in many different industries.
“Exa Static 3G gives all the flexibility of 3G mobile broadband – computers which work almost anytime, anywhere, plus access to secure and filtered networks only usually available to people logging on through a land-line with a static IP address.”
For more information on business opportunities in the area, visit the Invest in Bradford listing.
