Scotland’s employee ownership community has taken centre stage at the UK Employee Ownership Awards 2026, with three Scottish businesses and leaders recognised as the UK’s EO sector plots further rapid growth. The latest UK figures show the employee owned (EO) sector has grown 300% between 2020 and 2025 to 2,890 businesses, and is now expected to surpass 3,000 firms by the end of 2026.

Three hundred employee owners and EO advisers gathered in Birmingham on 10 June for the inaugural eoaLive! event, sponsored by Howden, one of the largest employee-owned businesses in the UK. Delegates heard how they can support delivery of the UK EO Growth Strategy, share best practice to develop their own organisations, and celebrate the winners of the UK Employee Ownership Awards 2026. The activity forms part of a wider programme of celebrations under the ‘Owning It’ theme in the run-up to EO Day on 19 June, which will see thousands of employee owners marking the growing impact of the model across the four nations.

The UK EO sector now includes 432,000 employee owners whose businesses are credited with driving productivity, growth, sustainability and innovation, with emerging trends in sectors and regions set to guide the next phase of expansion. James de le Vingne, Chief Executive of the Employee Ownership Association (eoa), said: “We have an unrivalled opportunity to grow the EO sector in a way that maximises impacts through fairer more rewarding livelihoods, with people powering better businesses that create long lasting benefits for communities, regions, and the UK economy.” He added: “We’re working to ensure our target of 7,500 EO businesses by 2030 – developed as part of our work with the Mutuals and Cooperatives Sector Business Council to support the government’s pledge to double the size of the sector – will get the support it needs to enable impactful growth, including clear guidance for, and futureproofing of, the Employee Ownership Trust.”

Scottish EO leaders among UK award winners

The UK Employee Ownership Awards, sponsored by Howden and aligned with eoaLive! and EO Day 2026, crowned businesses and individuals in seven categories. Among the business awards, Booth Welsh of Irvine, Scotland, was named EO Transition of the Year for its move to employee ownership as a global multi-disciplinary engineering and technology firm delivering integrated services from design to AI and digitalisation across multiple industries.

Answer Digital, an employee-owned digital consultancy based in Leeds that supports complex organisations with AI, cloud and user-centred design, was named EO Business of the Year, while Exeter-based Bartlett Ltd took EO Rising Star of the Year for its commercial refrigeration, air conditioning and catering equipment services. The individual awards highlighted EO leaders who are “Owning It” by inspiring colleagues and embedding employee ownership in their organisations.

The Philip Baxendale Fellowship Award went to Dennis Overton, retired founder of Aquascot in Alness, Scotland, who has played a key role in promoting employee ownership north of the border. The citation notes his role in helping secure a target for 500 EO businesses by 2030 within Scotland’s National Strategy for Economic Development, reflecting his long-standing belief in the power of employee ownership and collaboration. Aquascot’s impact was further recognised when employee owner Patrycja Cisewska was named Employee Owner of the Year, underlining the firm’s status as one of Scotland’s best-known EO businesses.

Celebrating EO leadership and innovation

Other individual honours included EO Leader of the Year, awarded jointly to Sarah Jane Owen and Marie Buss of Brighton-based Outcomes Star, and Trustee of the Year, which went to Tessa May of Answer Digital. The eoa Membership Council also selected two EO Smile Award recipients – Go Ape trustee Chris Jones and East Coast Community Healthcare – to recognise innovative approaches to driving EO excellence and impact.

Reflecting on the standard of entries, Martin Camp, Executive Director at Howden, said: “Congratulations to all of this year’s winners for the impact they are making through employee ownership.” He added: “The standard across the sector is exceptionally high, with so many inspiring EO stories extending well beyond the shortlist and making final judging decisions far from easy. It’s the people and the momentum behind employee ownership that continue to impress, with stories of leadership, innovation and shared purpose emerging from every corner of the sector.”

In the run-up to EO Day 2026 on Friday 19 June, celebrations and awareness-raising activities are set to continue across the UK, ranging from team events and volunteering projects to profit-share payouts, EO representative elections and digital campaigns. These efforts will culminate in a day of sharing stories and insights across social media under the ‘Owning It’ theme, highlighting how EO is creating a “ripple effect” of benefits for current and future generations.

EO Day and the role of Howden and the eoa

EO Day 2026 will see thousands of employee owners from hundreds of businesses celebrate the power and potential of employee ownership, showcasing how individuals, organisations and the wider sector are contributing to long-term economic and social impact. The eoa, which represents more than 800 members, positions itself as the national voice for employee ownership, focused on growing the EO sector, setting standards for “Great EO”, and strengthening and connecting the EO community through events, networks, research and collaboration.

Founded in 1994, Howden is described as one of the largest employee-owned businesses in the UK and one of the largest insurance groups in the world. The company not only sponsors eoaLive!, the UK EO Awards, EO Day and a dedicated 2026 Trustee Dinner, but also holds eoa Trustee member status and offers specialist insurance, risk management and employee benefits solutions tailored to EO businesses. Its continued backing of the awards and wider programme underscores the growing role of large EO groups in supporting the next wave of conversions and growth.

Techscaler was Scotland’s attempt to build the connective tissue its startup ecosystem had long lacked at national scale: one network linking founders, mentors, operators, investors, education and place across the country rather than leaving that work scattered across individual cities and institutions. Two years on from its initial rollout, that network is no longer an idea or a policy promise; it is visible in the shape of the programme’s reach, from 1,591 companies and 2,090 individual members to seven strategic hubs, 79 ecosystem partners and international pathways running through Silicon Valley, Japan, Singapore and London.

That matters because Scotland did not start from zero in 2022. It already had founders, universities, early-stage capital and pockets of sector strength, but it did not have a single founder-facing layer designed to connect those assets at this scale or with this degree of operational consistency. The Scottish Government’s decision to award a contract worth up to £42 million to Edinburgh-based CodeBase was the bet that such a layer could be built — and that a more connected startup economy would produce better companies over time.

The network in numbers

The strongest case for Techscaler’s first phase is that it has built reach and depth at the same time. The 2025 Annual Report says the programme has supported 1,591 companies and 2,090 individual members since launch, with 1,274 enrolments in education programmes and 745 member companies receiving mentorship across 3,458 mentorship sessions. Those are not just activity measures; taken together, they suggest a support system that is being used repeatedly rather than sampled once and forgotten.

The capital figure tells a similar story when framed properly. Member companies have raised £257.6 million since 2022, presented in the Annual Report as cumulative private-market backing for the founders the programme supports rather than as a claim of direct programme causation. For an HGS reader, the more interesting point is what that says about traction: a national platform only starts to matter when it helps turn a broad funnel of founders into businesses that outside capital is prepared to back.

This is also where the contract context belongs. The 2022 contract announcement set out a programme worth up to £42 million to establish seven tech scaler hubs across Scotland, with world-class education, mentoring and peer learning at the centre of the model. Two years on, the argument is less about the size of the commitment than about whether the infrastructure it funded now looks substantial enough to shape founder behaviour across the country.

The seven-hub spine

One of the programme’s most important ideas was geographic rather than numerical. Instead of concentrating support in a single flagship city, Techscaler was built around a seven-hub spine intended to give founders in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Dundee, Aberdeen, Inverness, Stirling and the South of Scotland a recognisable route into the same national network. In a country Scotland’s size, that matters because a single-city accelerator model can create prestige while still leaving large parts of the founder base on the edge of the system.

The hub model works because it combines physical visibility with a wider operating network. The Annual Report’s headline of seven strategic hubs is reinforced by the programme’s broader partnership architecture and by the evaluation’s description of support designed for founders at different stages of the startup journey, from ideation to scaling. What this gives Scotland is not simply more desks or more events, but a repeatable national shape: the same founder can enter through a local hub and still access a network designed to travel with them as the company grows.

That is why local openings such as Water’s Edge in Dundee matter beyond their own postcode. They turn an abstract national programme into a visible front door, while keeping founders connected to expertise and networks that sit well beyond one city. For a country trying to widen participation in high-growth company building, that combination of local entry point and national reach may be Techscaler’s most consequential structural choice so far.

The international layer

If the hubs are the domestic spine, the international layer is the part of the offer most directly tied to scale-up ambition. The Annual Report says Techscaler has supported 80 founders through international missions, with 42 founders backed to test, validate and scale internationally through programmes spanning Silicon Valley, Japan, Singapore and London. It also says the programme facilitated more than 50 curated investor introductions in 2025.

For Scottish founders, that matters because global market exposure is one of the hardest things to reproduce through local ecosystem energy alone. International access is expensive, relationship-driven and difficult to improvise; a national programme that can open structured pathways into mature markets and investor circles is doing something that many regional support schemes cannot. In practical terms, it means a founder building from Scotland does not have to choose between being locally rooted and internationally ambitious at quite the same early stage as before.

The Annual Report’s language around this is worth taking seriously. It positions internationalisation not as an add-on for a handful of companies, but as part of a more deliberate effort to build globally competitive businesses from Scotland. For HGS readers thinking about scale-up trajectories, that is where Techscaler starts to move beyond ecosystem support and towards something closer to strategic growth infrastructure.

The partnership architecture

In Techscaler’s case, the Annual Report points to 79 ecosystem partners supporting founders nationwide, while the original contract announcement named partners including Google for Startups UK, Barclays Eagle Labs and Reforge. The strategic value of that architecture is that it lets the programme connect different kinds of institutional strength — from education and commercialisation to later-stage learning, investor readiness and market access — so founders are moving through a networked platform rather than a single support offer.

The 2025 report also suggests that the network is becoming more selective in how it deploys that support. Its focus on high-growth companies, investor connectivity, academic commercialisation, AI and deeptech innovation, and the tech talent pipeline points to a programme that is beginning to think not only about widening the funnel, but about what kinds of companies Scotland most wants to help build next. That is the sort of shift an intervention at this stage needs to make if it is to remain founder-first without becoming founder-generic.

The next phase

The Scottish Government’s early evaluation of the programme, published in 2025, raised the questions a programme at this stage is naturally asked to answer — how attribution should be understood, how hub utilisation should be read, and how clearly the underlying theory of change is expressed. Those are the right questions for the next phase. But they make most sense as the agenda for years three and four rather than as a verdict on the first two.

A programme in this position has done its first job if it has built the network, established the partnerships, created recognisable entry points for founders and opened international footholds that did not previously exist at this scale. On the evidence of the Annual Report, Techscaler has done that. The next couple of years are where the second job comes into view: proving that breadth converts into depth, that the network effect compounds, and that the original £42 million bet pays back not only in programme activity but in companies that are stronger, more investable and more globally ambitious than they would otherwise have been.

That was the picture at the end of the first two years of impact. From here, investors, founders and policymakers will be watching to see whether that trajectory continues — and how many of Scotland’s next standout companies build through this spine.

French renewables developer Qair has reached financial close on its first UK project, the 46.51 MWp Brecks Solar Farm, while its 1 GW Ayre floating wind farm off Orkney has secured onshore consent and moved a step closer to construction around 2030.

Ayre: 1 GW floating wind off Orkney

Ayre is a 1 GW floating offshore wind project located east of Orkney and north of Caithness, awarded under Scotland’s ScotWind leasing round and originally developed by the Thistle Wind Partners consortium. The wind farm is planned to comprise around 40 to 60 turbines using next‑generation machines in the 15 MW to 25 MW range, connected into the national grid via new onshore transmission infrastructure.

In November 2025, Qair announced it had acquired full ownership of Ayre from its ScotWind partners, becoming the sole developer and reinforcing its long‑term commitment to the Scottish market. The developer says the project is expected to deliver around 1 GW of capacity — enough power for more than one million households — once fully commissioned in the early 2030s.

Planning milestones and timelines

In March 2026, Qair secured planning consent from Highland Council for the onshore infrastructure required to connect Ayre to the national electricity network, a step the company described as a critical milestone for Scotland’s first wave of commercial‑scale floating wind projects. The approved works cover the cable landfall and substation facilities needed to bring power ashore from the deepwater site east of Orkney.

Qair’s latest project information indicates that Ayre remains in the development phase, with environmental and technical studies progressing, and that offshore construction is anticipated to begin around 2030, with full commissioning by around 2033. The developer presents the scheme as a significant contribution towards Scotland’s 2045 net‑zero target and Europe’s wider shift away from fossil fuels.

Brecks: first UK financial close

Against that Scottish backdrop, Qair has now secured financing for its 46.51 MWp Brecks Solar Farm in Nottinghamshire, its first UK project to reach financial close. The project will be built near Retford and is backed by debt from BayernLB under a Contract for Difference revenue framework, giving lenders long‑term price certainty.

Construction at Brecks is scheduled to start in June 2026, with commercial operations targeted for the second quarter of 2027. Once online, the solar farm is expected to generate around 46 GWh of renewable electricity annually, helping to cut emissions and contributing to the UK’s decarbonisation goals.

Financing track record and UK pipeline

Qair describes the Brecks financial close as an important demonstration of its ability to structure and close UK deals, de‑risking a national pipeline of around 1 GW of advanced projects. The company highlights the transaction as evidence that it can navigate UK regulatory, financial and operational requirements — experience that will be relevant as Ayre and other Scottish projects move towards investment decisions later in the decade.

While Brecks and Ayre are separate projects in different parts of the UK, the solar farm gives Qair a live UK asset, an established banking relationship and CfD‑backed cashflow as it advances its Scottish offshore wind plans. For Scotland’s offshore wind build‑out, having developers with proven UK financing and delivery track records is an important part of turning ScotWind leases into real projects and jobs rather than simply paper capacity.

What it means for Scotland’s energy build‑out

For Scotland’s high‑growth energy and supply‑chain firms, the combination of a 1 GW floating wind project progressing through consents and a developer closing its first UK deal offers a clearer line of sight on future work. Ayre’s deepwater location and floating foundations will require specialised engineering, ports, fabrication and operations capability, with Qair signalling a long‑term presence in the Scottish market.

The next test for Ayre will be the timing and structure of its own financing as planning consents and grid connections are finalised later this decade. For now, Brecks provides an early indicator that Qair can get UK projects over the financial line, a signal that investors and policymakers will watch as Scotland looks to turn its ScotWind pipeline into concrete investment, Scottish supply‑chain work and operating capacity.

Construction of the £9.1m EnergyWorks facility in Aberdeen and a new TechX accelerator cohort of 11 cleantech start‑ups highlight how the Net Zero Technology Centre is trying to turn the North East into a net‑zero innovation and manufacturing hub.

EnergyWorks: a physical home for cleantech scale‑ups

Construction has begun on the £9.1 million EnergyWorks facility in Aberdeen’s Energy Transition Zone, billed as a Scotland‑first centre for developing and manufacturing green energy technologies. The 3,000 square metre building will provide industrial units, advanced manufacturing space and collaboration areas for firms working in sectors such as offshore wind, hydrogen and battery storage.

The project is backed by the UK Government, Scottish Government, Scottish Enterprise, bp and industry, with National Manufacturing Institute Scotland and the Net Zero Technology Centre as delivery partners. EnergyWorks is designed as a “one‑stop shop” for companies ready to move from prototype to production, with an ecosystem of mentoring and entrepreneurial support intended to help tenants grow and ultimately graduate into the wider regional economy.

Funding and jobs ambitions

UK Energy Minister Michael Shanks has marked the start of work on EnergyWorks, which is expected to be operational in early autumn 2025. UK Government funding of £5.5 million is being supplemented by £2 million from Scottish Enterprise, additional Scottish Government support and £1.25 million from bp, reflecting the project’s role in wider net‑zero industrial policy.

The facility aims to attract at least 15 tenants in its first year and to generate dozens of green energy jobs annually, with the building itself designed to run on 100% green electricity, partly supplied by on‑site solar. Use of sustainable construction materials and a focus on low‑carbon operations are intended to make the campus a demonstrator for the technologies it houses.

TechX 2025: eleven start‑ups, £500,000 in funding

Alongside the physical campus build, the Net Zero Technology Centre has selected 11 start‑ups for its 2025 TechX Clean Energy Accelerator, each receiving a share of £500,000 in grant funding linked to NZTC’s standard future‑equity agreement. The cohort covers technologies in low‑carbon hydrogen, carbon capture, renewable power and digital solutions, reflecting the breadth of the clean‑energy value chain.

Solar Power Portal reports that the winning companies include thermal energy specialists AED Energy and Global OTEC, hydrogen‑focused firms such as PEM Technologies, Protonera and Entropyst, carbon‑capture player Remedium Energy, and flow‑battery developer SoLead Energy. NZTC’s own announcement adds CGEN Engineering, EBB:Flow, Kondor and Plasma2x to the list, bringing the total to 11 companies in the 2025 cohort.

Pipeline from concept to manufacturing

NZTC’s TechX accelerator offers an intensive multi‑week programme of mentorship, technology development guidance and commercial support, followed by up to two years of growth assistance and access to its investor and operator network. The programme targets companies at technology readiness levels three to six, using grant funding and structured support to help them reach deployment‑ready stages.

For EnergyWorks, that pipeline matters because NZTC expects some TechX participants to become future tenants, bringing with them proven technologies in hydrogen, carbon capture, storage and novel power systems. By combining an accelerator programme with on‑the‑ground industrial space, NZTC and its partners are trying to anchor more of the clean‑energy supply chain in the North East rather than seeing promising start‑ups relocate for manufacturing.

North East’s net‑zero positioning

EnergyWorks is a flagship project within the wider Energy Transition Zone in Aberdeen, which aims to position the region as the “net zero capital of Europe”, a phrase used by ETZ and local partners to describe their ambition. The hub is intended to complement existing offshore and port infrastructure by providing a landing place for new technologies and companies that can feed into major projects in areas such as offshore wind, hydrogen production and grid‑scale storage.

For high‑growth firms and investors, the combination of dedicated manufacturing space, structured accelerator support and co‑ordination between government, industry and research institutions gives the North East a clearer proposition as a location to develop and scale clean‑energy technologies. The test will be how quickly the TechX cohort and their peers convert that environment into commercial deployments, revenues and jobs in Scotland over the next few years rather than elsewhere.

Scotland’s economy grew just 0.1% in Q1 2026 as services and construction offset a sharp fall in production, leaving ministers defending their growth strategy in a Holyrood debate on “Growing Scotland’s Economy”.

Scotland’s onshore GDP rose by 0.1% in the first quarter of 2026, down from 0.2% in the final quarter of 2025 and well below the UK’s 0.6% growth over the same period. Over the year to Q1 2026, Scottish GDP is up 0.8%, compared with 1.1% across the UK, underscoring a persistent growth gap.

As the Office of the Chief Economic Adviser puts it, “the Scottish economy grew 0.1% in the first quarter of 2026, slowing from 0.2% growth in the fourth quarter of 2025”. The bulletin adds that “the subdued pace of growth is reflective of business survey evidence in which businesses have reported that new orders and demand conditions remained weak over the first quarter of the year and have weakened further over March and April”.

The latest bulletin links that subdued pace to weak demand and new orders, with business surveys pointing to conditions softening further through March and April as the Middle East conflict pushed up energy and fuel costs. Consumer sentiment has fallen to its lowest level since early 2023, adding another drag on spending and investment appetite.

Behind the headline number, the production sector contracted by 0.5% in Q1 2026, reversing from 1.3% growth at the end of 2025 and acting as a brake on the wider economy. Manufacturing output fell by 1.4% over the quarter, while production as a whole is now 2% lower than a year earlier despite gains in electricity, gas, water and waste.

By contrast, services grew by 0.2%, with consumer-facing services returning to growth and retail output up 2.2%, even as accommodation and food services continued to shrink. Construction output moved back into positive territory with 0.4% growth after a sharp drop around the turn of the year, marking its first three-month rise since September 2025.

The bulletin highlights how “impacts from the conflict in the Middle East have started to emerge in the Scottish economy”, with global wholesale oil and gas prices “significantly above their pre-conflict levels” and highly sensitive to how long supply routes remain constrained. It notes that UK headline inflation fell to 2.8% in April, helped by a 7% cut in the domestic Energy Price Cap, but warns that “stronger inflationary pressures are building” and inflation is “expected to rise to around 4%” later in 2026 as a 13% cap increase in July and higher business costs work their way through.

For high-growth firms, the combination of higher input costs and weak demand is visible in business surveys, with the RBS Growth Tracker reporting contracting activity in April and a sharp rise in reported input prices. The Scottish Consumer Sentiment Indicator has dropped to a net balance of -16.7, reflecting weaker views on current economic performance, household finances and willingness to spend.

Scotland’s labour market remains relatively tight by historical standards, but the bulletin notes it has weakened over the past year. The unemployment rate rose to 4.4% in the three months to March, while the employment rate fell to 73.7% and the inactivity rate climbed to 22.7%, pointing to softer labour demand.

PAYE data show the number of payrolled employees has slipped 0.6% over the year to April to its lowest level since early 2023, even as real earnings growth picked up to 2.7% in April on the back of 5.6% nominal wage growth and lower inflation. For growth businesses, that mix of easing but still-tight labour markets, rising real wages and elevated uncertainty complicates hiring and investment decisions.

The bulletin’s outlook section stresses that “the conflict in the Middle East continues to weigh on the economic outlook, generating upward pressure on energy prices and uncertainty”. The Scottish Fiscal Commission’s January projections still point to Scottish GDP growth of 1.3% in both 2026 and 2027, but the bulletin explicitly flags the conflict as a downside risk.

In April, the Fraser of Allander Institute cut its forecast for 2026 from 1.1% to 0.9%, and from 1.2% to 1.0% in 2027, citing the impact of higher energy prices and weaker global conditions. KPMG’s latest analysis, reported through Scottish business channels, now expects Scottish GDP growth to slow to around 0.8% in 2026 from an estimated 1.4% in 2025, broadly aligning with those more cautious independent assessments.

Ministers brought a dedicated “Growing Scotland’s Economy” debate to the Scottish Parliament on 9 June, days after the economic bulletin set out the new numbers and risks. For operators and investors, the key question is whether that debate translates into more targeted support for the production-intensive parts of the economy now acting as a drag on GDP.

For high-growth manufacturing and production businesses, a 0.5% quarterly fall in production output and a 2% year-on-year decline signal a tougher operating environment even as services and construction hold up. At the same time, the combination of modest headline growth, downgraded independent forecasts and a still-busy policy agenda at Holyrood means macro conditions will remain central to how investors evaluate Scottish pipelines in 2026.

By High Growth Scotland editorial

Scotland’s public sector is quietly turning a familiar-sounding procurement roadshow into part of the country’s growth infrastructure. Meet the Buyer-style events are now a core way councils and agencies open up billions of pounds of contract opportunities to smaller, high-growth firms rather than just the usual majors.

At the centre of this shift is National Meet the Buyer 2026, held on 2 June at the DoubleTree by Hilton Glasgow Central and hosted by the Supplier Development Programme in partnership with the Scottish Government and Scotland Excel. The Scottish Government’s procurement directorate frames it as the place where suppliers can stake a claim to their share of around £17.5 billion in annual public-sector spend, with a line-up that includes councils from Edinburgh to North Lanarkshire alongside national agencies and health boards.

For Scottish operators, the format is deliberately practical rather than ceremonial. Buyers staff stands, suppliers book short one-to-one slots, and a parallel agenda walks businesses through Public Contracts Scotland registration, upcoming frameworks and what “tender-ready” really looks like for an SME or social enterprise still scaling its internal processes.

That national event sits in a wider calendar that has pushed Meet the Buyer activity firmly beyond the Central Belt. In March, Meet the Buyer Tayside 2026 brought the same model to the Innovation Hub at Michelin Scotland Innovation Parc in Dundee, with Dundee City Council partnering with SDP to convene buyers and main contractors for a four-hour session focused on upcoming contracts, sub-contracting slots and local business support in the region.

Suppliers at the Dundee event were invited to hear directly about planned work across the Tayside area, including opportunities linked to major infrastructure projects and routine council pipelines that rarely feature in national headlines but underpin many steady-growth local businesses. For founders and operators used to seeing procurement as a black box, that kind of access to buyers’ diaries in a single room is a material shift in how they can build public-sector revenues.

Edinburgh’s role in this story is less about hosting and more about showing up as a buyer in its own right. The City of Edinburgh Council is named among the local authorities sending procurement teams to National Meet the Buyer 2026, putting its future contract pipeline in front of micro, small and medium-sized firms that might otherwise never get beyond the generic inbox.

Alongside that, suppliers preparing to meet Edinburgh’s category managers are being pointed towards a “Meet the ‘Real’ Buyer” session, billed by SDP as a way to help firms understand expectations and sharpen their pitch ahead of the main Glasgow event. That preparatory layer underlines that the city is investing staff time not just in compliance but in making it more likely that smaller, innovative providers can credibly compete for work.

Further north, the model is being adapted for a very different geography. Meet the Buyer North 2026, due at Aberdeen’s Music Hall on 3 September, is advertised as the largest free procurement event focused on the North of Scotland, explicitly targeting suppliers from the Highlands and Islands as well as the North-east.

Highlands and Islands Enterprise is among the organisations trailing its presence in advance, telling suppliers what to expect at its stand and how they can plug into HIE-backed projects through the event. Coupled with Highland Council’s active membership of the Supplier Development Programme and a track record of exhibiting at earlier Meet the Buyer North editions, that gives Highland and Islands firms a clearer route into both regional and national programmes without needing to base themselves in Glasgow or Edinburgh.

Taken together, these events amount to a structured attempt to rebalance who gets sight of public-sector work in Scotland. Councils and agencies that once treated procurement as a largely internal function are turning up at open events in Dundee, Glasgow and Aberdeen with forward-looking pipelines, named contacts and practical guidance on how smaller suppliers can move from curiosity to contract.

For high-growth firms, the opportunity is two-fold. On one side, a single day at National Meet the Buyer or its regional cousins can compress years of networking into a handful of focused conversations with anchor customers; on the other, the explicit emphasis on micro, small and medium-sized suppliers signals that councils are prepared to diversify their supplier base when the capability is there.

The Scottish experience also sits in a broader UK trend. In Greater Manchester and the Liverpool City Region, the STAR Procurement partnership runs its own Meet the Buyer day to connect local firms with councils, housing providers and NHS bodies, while East Midlands Airport reports upwards of £30 million of contracts placed with SMEs off the back of its Meet the Buyers programme over recent years. Industry organisers note that “Meet the Buyer” has effectively become a standard label for events where main contractors and public bodies convene their supply chains and recruit new local partners, with outcomes increasingly tracked rather than left anecdotal.

What distinguishes the Scottish approach is the degree of coordination across levels of government. The Supplier Development Programme, funded by a consortium of councils and the Scottish Government, provides a common framework and brand for national, regional and sector-specific events, while individual authorities and agencies plug in their own pipelines and support offers.

For Scottish SMEs and scale-ups building a public-sector route to market, the next 12 months already show a clear annual rhythm around key Meet the Buyer activity, with exact dates to be confirmed by organisers in due course.

Indicative procurement calendar for Scottish SMEs

Scottish and Norwegian businesses have been urged to seize significant opportunities emerging across both the energy transition and traditional energy sectors at the 13th Aberdeen–Norway Gateway in Aberdeen. The event spotlighted a pipeline that includes oil and gas investment estimated at NOK266 billion in 2026, government ambitions to allocate areas for 30,000 MW of offshore wind production by 2040, and plans for the world’s first open-source CO₂ transport and storage infrastructure.

Hosted by Granite PR in association with Invest in Rogaland and ONS at the Macdonald Norwood Hall Hotel, the gateway drew almost 100 delegates and was chaired by ETZ development manager Jacqui Watt. Civic messages from Aberdeen Lord Provost Dr David Cameron and Rogaland County Mayor Ole Ueland set the tone for a day focused on strengthening Scotland–Norway links across the evolving North Sea energy landscape.

ONS Foundation president and CEO Leif Johan Sevland used his keynote to look ahead to this year’s ONS event in Stavanger, which is expected to attract more than 72,600 visitors from 102 countries between 24 and 27 August. “We feel in Norway a very strong commitment to the energy industry,” he told delegates, adding that “people are happy to continue with oil and gas activity although they know we need to reduce CO₂ emissions and we need to diversify and build more activity offshore in addition to the oil and gas sector. Last year was the second best for exploration in the last ten years and investment will continue for years to come.”

Technology companies Imenco AS, Reach Subsea, Roemex, Mocean and Motive Offshore shared first-hand accounts of operating on both sides of the North Sea, illustrating the role that Scandi–Scots partnerships can play in scaling specialist energy supply-chain businesses. The Net Zero Technology Centre, Widerøe and Invest in Rogaland completed a busy line-up that gave delegates a concise, market-focused view of where Scottish firms can plug into Norwegian projects and joint opportunities.

Rogaland County Mayor Ole Ueland said: “Rogaland and Scotland have worked closely together for decades, and that cooperation remains as important as ever. As the energy industry evolves, we see new opportunities emerging on both sides of the North Sea. The Aberdeen–Norway Gateway is a valuable arena for strengthening connections and exploring those opportunities together.“

Glasgow-based corporate gifting startup Go Swag has raised 5 million dollars in new funding to accelerate international expansion, grow its team and invest further in its AI-powered platform. The round was led by Mercia Ventures, with participation from Techstart Ventures and strategic angel investors, taking total funding raised to 6.2 million dollars.

Founded in Glasgow and focused on premium branded merchandise and global fulfilment, Go Swag runs a platform that helps companies design and deliver on-brand gifts to customers and staff around the world. Its technology combines AI‑assisted product curation with warehousing, logistics and recipient management so corporate gifting programmes can be managed end‑to‑end from a single system. The company already serves more than 1,000 organisations, including brands such as Meta, Apple, Netflix, ElevenLabs and n8n.

According to Tech.eu, which carries the funding announcement, the new capital will be used primarily to support US expansion. Go Swag plans to step up its presence in the United States, open a warehouse in Southeast Asia to strengthen global distribution, and continue investing in automation across quoting, account management, fulfilment and recommendation systems. The company also intends to scale its team significantly, growing headcount from around 30 to about 70 people, with new roles spread across engineering, operations and go‑to‑market functions.

For investors, the thesis behind the round is that corporate gifting is a large but under‑digitised market where better technology can improve both customer experience and operational efficiency. Go Swag positions its AI‑powered, full‑stack approach as an alternative to catalogue‑based gifting, arguing that every item a company sends with its logo on it has a cumulative impact on the brand. The fresh funding gives the Glasgow startup the capital to test that proposition at larger international scale while maintaining its headquarters and core operations in Scotland.

The signals in this round are clear: a named Scottish scaleup with institutional capital from Mercia Ventures and Techstart Ventures, a commitment to more than double the team, and a plan to anchor global growth around US and Asian infrastructure rather than relocating away from Glasgow. It is a snapshot of a Scottish company using external funding to build a global niche in a fragmented market from a Scottish base.

By High Growth Scotland editorial

Edinburgh-based GovTech venture ePass is aiming to become one of Scotland’s standout scaleups after reporting £1 million in revenue in its first year of trading and securing a flagship national deployment across the public sector. A Founded in 2024 by chief executive James Buchan and chief technology officer Chris Renga, the company emerged from a successful bid in one of the largest CivTech challenges to date, centred on delivering a new tobacco and vapes retailers register. A

The ePass platform focuses on licensing, registration and permitting, positioning itself as a reusable digital component that public bodies can adopt across multiple service lines. A Following its CivTech win, the startup’s tobacco and vapes register was built and deployed in just six months, underlining the team’s ability to move at pace within a complex regulatory environment. A Buchan and Renga have since set their sights on turning that first use case into a broader GovTech footprint, with ePass already rolling out across Scotland’s public sector. A C

ePass was among the first private organisations to be onboarded to the Scottish Government’s cloud platform, a key part of the national digital infrastructure strategy. A Later this year, it is expected to become the first live service on the Scottish Government’s ‘App for Scotland’, giving citizens and businesses mobile access to the platform’s licensing and registration services. A For Scotland’s digital ecosystem, that early-mover position places ePass at the centre of how core public services are being modernised and accessed. C

The platform is now live across the Scottish Government as a core digital component, currently serving all 32 local authorities and more than 15,000 businesses. A The company expects that figure to rise to around 80,000 businesses by next year as additional sectors and use cases come on stream. A Taken together, those numbers suggest that ePass is already operating at meaningful national scale, with a clear runway for expansion into further regulatory domains. C

Buchan argues that ePass is tackling a long-standing structural issue in Scottish public services. A “Scotland has had a licensing problem for decades. Licensing and registration are essential public services, but too often the underlying processes have been fragmented, paper-heavy and difficult to manage consistently,” he said. Q “ePass was created to reduce that friction, and we are now a core component of Scotland’s national digital infrastructure. We are now helping public bodies move towards a more reusable, consistent and scalable model for licensing, permitting and registration.” Q For high-growth observers, that focus on reuse and consistency aligns closely with broader efforts to make Scotland’s public-service stack more modular and data-driven. C

The timing of ePass’s progress overlaps with the Scottish Government’s newly announced ‘Scotland’s AI Strategy 2026–2031’. A Commenting on the strategy, Buchan said: “Responsible AI in public services will depend on the quality of the underlying data, workflows and governance. That is where platforms such as ePass can play an important enabling role: creating structured, auditable service data from processes that have historically been fragmented or paper-based.” Q From a GovTech perspective, this positions ePass not just as a front-end service but as an enabling layer for future AI applications in compliance, enforcement and policy insight. C

While the company’s current footprint is concentrated in Scotland, ePass is already looking beyond its home market. A The UK public sector is valued at around £50 billion, and Buchan sees considerable room to adapt the platform for other jurisdictions and regulatory regimes. A “What is really exciting for ePass is the scope for expansion, not only into other areas of the public sector, but beyond Scotland into UK-wide and international markets,” he added. Q For investors tracking scalable public-sector platforms, that blend of domestic traction and clear export narrative will be a key part of the growth story. C

To support its ambitions, ePass has strengthened its senior team in 2026 with a series of strategic hires. A Bjorn Gisbertz has joined as director of public sector strategy, bringing experience from elected office, public administration and public-sector digital transformation across Northern Europe. A The company has also appointed Aaron Drummond as growth lead, with responsibility for shaping ePass’s expansion in the UK and overseas markets. A These appointments indicate that the company is building the commercial and policy depth needed to work with governments beyond Scotland. C

ePass is also investing in its broader organisation, with a number of engineering, delivery and operational hires currently underway. A With £1 million in revenue in its first twelve months and a live national deployment already in place, the company is actively engaging with venture capital and investor communities and is likely to embark on its first external fundraising round later this year. A For Scotland’s GovTech scene, that prospective raise will be an important signal of how far investor appetite has moved towards platforms that sit at the heart of national digital infrastructure rather than only at the edge of citizen services. C

If ePass can convert its early CivTech-backed traction into a repeatable model for licensing and permitting across multiple jurisdictions, the company will have a credible shot at becoming one of Scotland’s most significant GovTech scaleups over the next cycle. C As public bodies adapt to AI-era requirements for structured, auditable data and more resilient workflows, platforms built on live production use cases like the tobacco and vapes register are likely to attract increasing attention from both policymakers and growth capital. C

Edelweiss has launched a new twice-weekly service between Zurich and Glasgow, strengthening Scotland’s connectivity into a major European hub and opening up fresh opportunities for tourism, trade and high-value visitors this summer.

Glasgow Airport has welcomed the inaugural Edelweiss flight from Zurich, marking the official launch of a brand-new direct service between Scotland and Switzerland. The first flight touched down on Friday 29 May 2026, establishing a twice-weekly connection that will operate every Monday and Friday until 14 September 2026.

The new route gives passengers a convenient, direct link to Switzerland’s largest city and a key European hub. Zurich is not only a vibrant destination in its own right, with lakeside beauty, historic streets and easy access to the Swiss Alps, but also an important gateway into the wider Swiss network and beyond.

For Glasgow, the service adds another European connection to an airport that already hosts 20 airlines and serves around 100 destinations worldwide, including North America, Europe and the Gulf. This latest addition reinforces Glasgow Airport’s role as one of Scotland’s principal international gateways and supports its wider growth ambitions.

Chris Tibbett, Executive Director, Commercial Aviation and Marketing at Glasgow Airport, said:

“We’re proud to celebrate the arrival of Edelweiss’ first flight from Zurich, marking the successful launch of this exciting new route. It’s fantastic to see this service take off, providing our passengers with a direct link to one of Europe’s most popular destinations.

“Zurich is not only a vibrant city in its own right but also an important gateway to the wider Swiss network and beyond. This new connection further strengthens our partnership with the Lufthansa Group while enhancing choice and connectivity for travellers across Scotland.

“We look forward to seeing the route perform strongly throughout the summer and to welcoming many visitors from Switzerland to Glasgow.”

The link is expected to deliver benefits on both sides of the route. Zurich gives Scottish passengers fast access to one of Europe’s leading financial and corporate centres, while the direct connection will help attract more inbound visitors from Switzerland to Glasgow and the wider west of Scotland.

Glasgow Airport is a key component of Scotland’s transport infrastructure, supporting over 30,000 jobs and generating £1.44 billion in GVA annually for the Scottish economy. Incremental routes such as Zurich may be seasonal, but collectively they help underpin the airport’s long-term growth story and its contribution to Scotland’s international competitiveness — a theme also reflected in High Growth Scotland’s recent coverage of the reopening of Glasgow’s direct Toronto service, which positioned renewed international air links as growth corridors for Scottish business: Glasgow’s direct Toronto link reopens a transatlantic growth corridor for Scottish business.

Passengers can now book flights throughout the summer season via flyedelweiss.com.