Put your business in the running for a share of £550 million

A list is being built of Gloucestershire’s best small and medium-sized businesses to create a directory of potential new suppliers to some of its biggest companies - to win a share of a £550m spend.

Dear reader,

Welcome to Monday’s edition of The Raikes Journal.

An eclectic mix today, including a little bit of Gloucester Rugby, with CEO Alex Brown taking a lot of positives from the teams change to a more open style last season - and a real pick-up in interest on the business side too.

We have no big reads today, but we do take a look at some figures circulating from Gloucester Brewery, which the owner of the aforementioned Cherry & Whites is also heavily invested in.

And we help announce the launch of an initiative we first covered early last year on Raikes - to try to bring the county’s very biggest firms face to face with potential suppliers.

Its target is to keep more of that simply enormous spend in the county. If even a modest five per cent of that was diverted to SMEs through its new directory it hopes it will mean several hundred million pounds extra spent here in Gloucestershire!

Congratulations to the team at Together Gloucestershire for the incredible long battle it has taken…