Low carbon consultancy rises from Envirolink ashes

Four past employees of Envirolink Northwest, which was placed into voluntary liquidation on 8 January, have created a new company to carry on delivering services to businesses in the low carbon industries.

Gyron is a partnership created by Nicola Ball, Katherine Burden, Sue Gibson and Nick Storer, who together have more than 50 years' experience supporting businesses in the low carbon, energy and environmental industries. Together, they aim to provide expertise in the low carbon sector and its markets to businesses already involved in proving low carbon solutions and those interested in entering this growing market.

Nicola Ball, partner of Gyron, said: "The Low Carbon sector is one of the few bright spots in the UK economy at the moment; over the past few years this sector has been growing, in spite of the recession. But, there's an awful lot more to do to make sure the UK capitalises on this growing global market. We've formed Gyron to make sure that the legacy of Envirolink is not lost and to provide support to businesses in the low carbon sector, to help them grow and prosper.

"The low carbon industry contributes more than £110bn to the UK economy and is made up of more than 80,000 businesses, employing around 900,000 people. Growth of the industry has been around 2% or 3% a year over the past few years – far outstripping the general economy."

Gyron aims to apply its knowledge, experience and expertise to businesses in the low carbon industries to help those businesses to innovate and grow: assisting these businesses to provide technologies and services to the ever-growing demand for solutions to environmental issues.

Nick Storer, formerly chief executive of Envirolink, said: "The failure of Envirolink was very sad, all of our staff tried so hard to help the company make the transition from a public sector funded organisation into a commercial business, but the cards were stacked against us. The legacies of some of Envirolink's past funding streams worked against us and we found ourselves in a position where the company's finances were not growing fast enough – we simply ran out of time to turn the business model around."