Scottish SMEs generate £2.2bn turnover growth since 2015

Paddy Graham

For the first time, the research calculates growth through changes in turnover and employee size among the UK’s private companies with revenues between £3m and £150m, a category of 13,286 businesses nationwide, 892 of which are based in Scotland.

Overall, Scottish businesses in this group experienced 11 percent combined turnover growth over the last three years. The research found the regions for highest levels of turnover growth include Fife (20 percent), Argyll and Bute (26 percent) and the Scottish borders (25 percent).

These Scottish businesses have also experienced combined employee growth of 8.7 percent over the past three years, second only to London. 13,600 jobs were created by these companies since 2015, an average of 87 a week.

Paddy Graham, head of central Scotland and Northern Ireland at BGF, said: “While political and economic uncertainty has undoubtedly impacted business confidence in Scotland, it is encouraging to see so many businesses here showing continued growth. It’s more important than ever that ambitious companies like these are given the backing to accelerate their development.

“These figures show that, even in challenging market conditions, there are ambitious management teams in Scotland who are creating jobs and looking for new growth opportunities. A number of BGF’s portfolio companies are included in the data set, companies we’ve supported in their drive to scale up. We want to actively engage with more of these growing companies and to support their plans.”

The research has been released as part of BGF’s ‘Ready for Business’ campaign, which will see the investor confidently advocate for continued growth, committing to entrepreneurs and investing in the age of uncertainty.

BGF’s ‘Ready for Business’ report is available to download here.

The research looks at publicly-reported data. Given current reporting thresholds, this group of companies is likely to be much larger - BGF’s proprietary database indicates that there could be an additional 4,000 companies, increasing the size of this group by 30 percent.

BGF, the UK and Ireland’s most active investor, was founded in 2011 specifically to address a long-standing gap in equity funding directed into companies that have outgrown friends, family or angel funding but are not typically large enough to be courted by traditional private equity. BGF has invested £1.9bn in more than 270 companies since 2011.