The final six Young Enterprise companies from over 21 participating school teams throughout Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire have been selected by an independent judging panel after creating, setting up and running their own business for one school year.
The teams competing in this year’s final on April 27 are:
- bundl from Northfield Academy: themed gift sets such as ‘Movie Night bundl’ and ‘Pamper Hamper bundl’.
- Scent in the City from Inverurie Academy: Handcrafted, hypo-allergenic soap.
- Amygdala from Inverurie Academy: Creative wellness journals.
- SEED from Inverurie Academy: a social enterprise centred on mitigating carbon dioxide emissions.
- The Little Cottage from Oldmachar Academy: Homemade reed diffusers.
- Just Coastin’ from Peterhead Academy: Photographic coasters.
The six teams will now go head to head to find out which one will win the regional heat and represent Grampian at this year's Young Enterprise Scottish finals in June. In addition, teams will be competing for prizes for the Best Report, Best Presentation, Best Trade Stand and Best Managing Director (sponsored by Balmoral Group).
Chairman of Young Enterprise Grampian, Neil Marchant said: "The final stage of the Young Enterprise programme is for the teams to submit a detailed and professional business report. Some of the companies fall at this hurdle but this year, we had a record number of 22 reports submitted and they were all of excellent quality. Some teams missed out on being in the final six by only a couple of points. We now look forward to the culmination of all the teams’ hard work when we see who excels in front of the judging panel at the Finals next month.”
The Grampian Finals take place on April 27 at the Sir Ian Wood Building, RGU, Aberdeen. The teams will showcase their products to an audience of invited guests from the world of business, education and the general public before facing questions from a judging panel led by 25 year old entrepreneur, Jamie Hutcheon, founder of Cocoa Ooze whose recent appearance on BBC2’s Dragons’ Den led to him securing £70,000 worth of investment in the business.
He is joined by director of award winning recruitment consultancy Thorpe Molloy, Judith Thorpe; Julian Rippener, strategic contracts manager of Young Enterprise Grampian sponsor, Shell; Keith Findlay , business reporter at the Press & Journal; Mechelle Clark, owner of Aberdeen’s first grilled cheese takeaway, Melt and Willie Rennie, entrepreneur and non-executive director of oil service company, ICR.
A team from Inverurie Academy has represented the Grampian region at six of the last seven Scottish finals. Last year, 5th Scent narrowly missed out on representing Scotland at the UK wide event. This is the first year in YEG’s history that one school has had three teams in the final six.
Tickets for this free event can be booked here - https://yegfinal2017.eventbrite.co.uk
The Young Enterprise Company programme, which is a registered charity, provides business experience for S5 and S6 pupils where participants run their own company throughout this year long entrepreneurial experience. This year in Grampian, there were 21 schools with a total of 35 companies comprising over 350 pupils who took part in the Programme, which is sponsored by Shell and Nexen.