In today’s business briefing, Simon and Remy discuss the harvest of a Kent-based wine maker, overall losses at the Royal Mint, nuclear SMRs in South Yorkshire and finally Insider’s International Trade Awards coming on December 4th.
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00:00English wine, the Royal Mint, small modular reactors, and the International
00:05Trade Awards. That's what's coming up in today's Daily Business Briefing.
00:13Hi, I'm Simon Keegan. I'm Remy Greasley. Remy, welcome to your first Daily
00:20Business Briefing. So, yeah, I know you've been trawling our news. What
00:26stands out for you today? Yes, so one in particular was from Kent, an English
00:31winemaker, Gusborne, who are known for their sparkling wines, I believe.
00:35They've come out and said that this year it's been quite a quite a wet
00:39year for them, I believe, and they're expecting a lower yield, but it's a sort
00:44of story of quality over quantity. They're expecting it to be some quite
00:47high-quality wines. When they pointed to a wine, that Pinot Noir, which they
00:52called particularly expressive, which I think if someone is into that wine, I think.
00:57An expressive Pinot Noir. Sounds good to me. I suppose that's the risk with
01:03trying to grow grapes in this country, isn't it? I didn't even know you could
01:06sort of grow grapes in England. There you go. Every day's a school day, isn't it?
01:12They managed it. But how about yourself? Well, I was quite interested to see some
01:17figures from the Royal Mint. They've posted a loss of 3.7 million, and I know
01:22you're probably thinking, well, if they make their own coins, how can they be
01:25making a loss, compared to 10.2 million profit the previous year. But I think
01:32there's more to this story than meets the eye, really, because they did report an
01:37operating profit of over 12 million, and they've invested over 8 million,
01:43because they've got new processes. So, for example, they're recovering gold from
01:48used circuit boards, and also like defence equipment and things. So this is
01:54all part of the net zero credentials that they're recovering, these golds
02:00and metals. But they're actually, as well as being the UK's oldest coin maker, I
02:08believe that also the UK's oldest company. It goes all the way back to the
02:149th century. For many years, they made the coins, obviously, in the Tower
02:19of London, but now they're made in South Wales. But they've also announced
02:26recently the ceasing overseas coin production. I think they'll still do
02:32sorts of one-off commemorative coins and stuff, but they're not
02:37producing the actual currency, I don't think, overseas. But there's a lot to this.
02:42They've also said that they're going to be, instead of making the coins from
02:47scratch, and I'm probably oversimplifying this a little bit, they're going to buy
02:51the blanks up from elsewhere and then just kind of, you know, put a stamp on it.
02:55Exactly, yeah. So I wonder if it's going to become a bit of a lost art after all
03:00these, you know, over a thousand years. That would be a shame. There's certainly a lot of
03:04coin collectors out there. I hope that's not the case. Well, maybe some collections will go up in value as well.
03:10Maybe it's a good thing in the coin collecting world. Every dark cloud's got a silver lining, really.
03:16There you go. So what else have you been looking at? Yeah, so another one I've seen,
03:20which is quite interesting, actually, and it's quite a big news story, I think, is
03:24that US nuclear energy company Holtec, and they're one of, sort of, the US's
03:29biggest exporters in terms of nuclear technologies. They've decided to build a
03:37new, their SMR home, which is small modular reactors, in South Yorkshire.
03:43What that means, really, is that they'll build the factory as well as, sort of, a
03:48learning centre, invest in, I think it's 1.5 billion into the region, to
03:55create these SMRs, which will then go on to the rest of the UK. And I suppose any of these, sort of, energy projects,
04:03it's always the supply chain benefits as well, doesn't it, and the wider area.
04:07They said, I believe, they're going to try and, I think it was 70% of their whole supply chain, they
04:12wanted to keep within the UK, which, with something of this size, will be quite a
04:16considerable... Good news for the employment that it'll bring, definitely.
04:20Yeah, well, I've also just got back from judging the International Trade Awards
04:25for two days. Oh, you have, cool. Yeah, we went over to Hearst Accountants' new offices in
04:31Stockport, which are really nice. Yeah, I heard it was very nice. Yeah, it's brilliant, and we were joined by our other sponsors,
04:37including Cardinal Global Logistics, NatWest, Pannoni, Think, Corpay, and we also
04:43had on the panel a good friend of Insider, Lynn Shaw, from the DBT, Department of
04:48Business and Trade. And over two days, we saw some brilliant companies, and we're
04:53kind of just working out the shortlists now for that event. So, we'll be
04:57announcing that, I suppose, in the next few days. Can't give us any spoilers. No spoilers from me.
05:03And the event itself is going to be on December the 4th, the International
05:08Trade Awards Awards Dinner. So, obviously, I think everybody who's shortlisted will
05:13want to attend, but also, if you've just got an interest, you know, if you're an
05:17exporter, or you're just getting started in exports, it's a great event to go to.
05:22To meet some of these companies, and meet some of the people that are
05:26involved in exports. Definitely sounds, sounds it. It's great, yeah. So, all of these
05:32stories that Remy and I have talked about, you can see on insidermedia.com.
05:36You can also follow us on LinkedIn. You can follow us on Twitter. I'm at Simon K
05:44Insider. Remy, you're on Remy Insider? Yeah, at Remy Insider. Yeah, so you can follow us on
05:49social media, as well as checking out these stories on insidermedia.com.
05:53And we'll see you tomorrow. Bye.