Celebrating the biggest commercial successes in the county, the SoGlos Top 100 Businesses in Gloucestershire returned for a second year running in 2024, revealing the impressive turnover achieved by world-leading Gloucestershire-based companies across all sectors of business.
With a new year in sight, Dev Chakraborty, head of the growth and enterprise team at Gloucestershire County Council, with responsibility for The Growth Hub Gloucestershire, gives SoGlos his thoughts on the movers, new additions and interesting trends in this year's list, as well as what to expect from Gloucestershire's business community in 2025.
Dev, tell us why The Growth Hub was keen to support the SoGlos Top 100 in 2024.
Nurturing, promoting and maximising growth is what defines The
Growth Hub; and it's this vision and ethos that we feel aligns seamlessly with
the SoGlos Top 100. It’s the perfect opportunity for us as
The Growth Hub — and indeed as a county — to recognise and celebrate the
powerhouses which make Gloucestershire such a great place to live and work.
It’s often assumed that The Growth Hub is here for startups, micro businesses and SMEs — and whilst this is true, many don’t realise that we have been
working alongside some of Gloucestershire’s largest organisations since our
foundation at the University of Gloucestershire in 2014.
Flying the flag for Gloucestershire through the success of some of our biggest businesses is vital for the county, giving confidence not only to our local business owners, but also for inward investment from national and international organisations.
What was your reaction to this year's list?
The results are always met with eager anticipation across the
county — everyone’s eager to see who’s ranked number one and who’s made the top 10. There are those familiar faces that we were all expecting to see, such as St
James’s Place, Renishaw and Ecclesiastical, but I particularly like to see new
entries make the top 100 — and there have been a few this year!
Interestingly, the top 10 has seen a fair amount of movement. It’s great to see
PHINIA Delphi UK Ltd, the Green Britain Group Limited, Agrii and NOV Downhole Eurasia Limited making an appearance.
Meanwhile, we saw GE Aviation and Spirax Sarco PLC move down the rankings, and
Mears Group PLC and Superdry PLC climb up.
St James’s Place also moved up the listing from number three in 2023 to first place this year — and is the only business to have reported a turnover of more than £1 billion in both financial years, 2022 and 2023.
It’s encouraging to see how dynamic our business community is, with the majority of entries changing position in one way or another!
Were there any trends that you thought were particularly interesting this year?
Gloucestershire is quite a unique county when it comes to sector breakdown, we don’t have ‘all our eggs in one basket’.
We are a strong county across multiple sectors — cyber and digital; advanced manufacturing and engineering; tourism; creative; food and drink; healthcare and others. That can be really helpful if there are issues in one sector, it doesn’t affect the whole county.
One of the biggest events for UK businesses in 2024 was the Labour government’s Autumn Budget announcement – what kind of impact do you think the budget will have on Gloucestershire businesses heading into 2025?
Top employers such as GCHQ, NHS and LEA help to provide stability and essential services. Together with the top 100 businesses, they create a balanced economic ecosystem, combining innovation, investment and social impact.
Businesses like stability and we haven’t had a very stable business environment since the Covid pandemic. A new government will undoubtedly want to do things differently and we saw this in some of the announcements in the recent budget statement. The changes to National Insurance contributions will be quite a challenge for businesses; and I was disappointed to see the decision announced that the government were ‘minded to’ make this year the last year of funding for the Western Gateway initiative.
What kind of things do you expect, or would you like to see in next year's Top 100?
It’s always good to see some of our top companies like Renishaw, Spirax Sarco, Mira Showers and Cotteswold Dairy continuing to grow, but I'd like to see new names join this list too. Having a dynamic, thriving business community that represents all sectors demonstrates that the county is a great place to nurture and grow a business.
We’re also keen to see key supply chains for the larger businesses stay local and we continue to raise awareness of the connectivity opportunities for businesses of all sizes across the county.
We have an excellent mentoring programme for businesses of any size and are looking at a focused programme for rapid growth businesses. Experts across the county give up their time to help others succeed and we are very proud to host this through The Growth Hub.
