Written Statement: Sbardun

Today, I am announcing Sbardun, a new business support service focused on helping more Welsh businesses with strong growth potential to scale successfully and contribute to a stronger and more prosperous Welsh economy.

Improving productivity is central to raising wages, creating better jobs and strengthening the wealth that sustains public services. To achieve this, Wales needs more businesses that can innovate, adopt new technologies, attract investment, enter higher-value markets and grow while remaining rooted in Welsh communities.

Sbardun is testing a new model of support that will bring together resources from the Development Bank of Wales and Welsh Government business support to deliver a 24-month programme of intensive, entrepreneur-led support, alongside access to active capital investment.  The first cohort of twenty participants will be drawn from existing Development Bank of Wales customers.

The service will focus on businesses with the strongest potential to grow revenue, improve productivity, create skilled employment and compete in UK and international markets. They will receive practical challenge and support from experienced business leaders  and entrepreneurs who have successfully scaled their own companies.

Participating businesses will be supported to identify barriers to growth, strengthen leadership capability, access finance and networks, enter new markets and build the resilience needed to scale sustainably. Each cohort will also form a peer network, enabling businesses to learn from, support, challenge and hold one another to account whilst realising their growth potential.

Sbardun will work alongside the Welsh Government export, innovation and regional business support teams, contracted partners and the wider business support ecosystem. This will align expertise, advice, finance and market opportunities around businesses with genuine scale-up potential.

My vision is for Wales to become a nation where more ambitious businesses are able to start, scale and stay; where growth is matched by productivity, innovation and good jobs; and where more Welsh-headquartered firms have the confidence, capability and capital to compete successfully at home and internationally.

Over time, I want this to translate into a stronger pipeline of scaling companies: more businesses moving into higher employment and turnover bands, improved scale-up density, and a growing number of Welsh-headquartered firms. These ambitions will require further economic analysis and refinement, but setting them out now will help connect public, private and institutional effort around a shared national purpose.

The learning from the first cohort of Sbardun businesses will inform the service's future development and wider work to strengthen Wales's economic approach aligned to the national development agency.

Sbardun is an important step in unlocking the potential of scaling Welsh businesses, supporting productivity, better jobs and economic growth with meaningful impact for people, places and communities across Wales.