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Image caption: 3 March 2020: Roger Marsh (right) of the Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund with Ken Cooper, at West Yorkshire Combined Authority, Leeds.

6th May 2020

NPIF continues to lend despite UK uncertainty – generating over £320m of investment in the North’s small businesses to date

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Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund

The £400m Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund has remained active despite nationwide uncertainty, completing  61 deals worth over £14m since the beginning of 2020.

The Fund, which provides a mix of debt, equity and microfinance up to £2m, has continued to invest in small businesses across the north of England and is still very much open for business

NPIF’s Microfinance fund managers which include GC Business Finance, MSIF, Business Enterprise Fund (BEF) and Finance For Enterprise are all accredited lenders of the government’s Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme (CBILS) with a number of loans already being approved. This includes a £100k loan to support Altrincham-based Consensus Workspace and a £100k loan to enable Scarborough based Spectrum Cleaning Solutions to diversify its offer by launching a new ecommerce platform.

These deals build on the significant impact that NPIF has already had on ambitious companies to date across 10 northern LEP areas. Since its launch in March 2017, fund managers have invested over £162m into 601 businesses, bringing in an additional £167m from the private sector.

The sectors seeing the most impact from NPIF are manufacturing, tech, digital, creative and life sciences.

Roger Marsh, OBE DL, Chairman of NPIF Strategic Oversight Board, Chair of Leeds City Region Enterprise Partnership (LEP) and Chair of the NP11, said: “The Covid-19 pandemic has radically altered the world in which businesses operate and targeted financial support has never been more important to ensure those companies, especially SMEs, which are the lifeblood of our economy, survive and thrive.

“Now is a time of exceptional challenge to businesses, with access to finance and cashflow among the chief concerns many businesses have. I’m pleased to see the positive impact that NPIF is continuing to have across the North and encourage companies looking to innovate, diversify or scale-up – particularly to support the UK’s response to Covid-19 – to explore the support available.”

Ken Cooper, Managing Director at British Business Bank, said: “Small businesses are facing unprecedented economic circumstances, so it is great to see that our fund is stepping up to the challenge of supporting them during this difficult time.   We have been impressed by the response from all of our Fund Managers who are working hard to ensure local businesses can access vital funding, including from the CBILS, whilst also helping those companies that have already had NPIF funding.

“Although we’re now in a very different business environment, NPIF remains open for business, and will continue to make investments.”

The £400m Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund was launched in 2017 by the British Business Bank using funding from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), HM Government and the European Investment Bank. NPIF forms a key part of the British Business Banks’ objective to help reduce regional funding disparities and encourage economic prosperity in the North of England.

NPIF works with 10 Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs), Combined Authorities and fund managers to provide microfinance, debt and equity finance to businesses across the North West, Yorkshire and Humber and Tees Valley regions.

The funding options include microfinance between £25,000 and £100,000, debt finance between £100,000 and £750,000 and equity finance up to £2m.

The Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund project is supported financially by the European Union using funding from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) as part of the European Structural and Investment Funds Growth Programme 2014-2020 and the European Investment Bank.