Our Story
Founded in 2015 by Dr Sarah Gaunt, SPG Innovation started as a consultancy, offering expert advice and providing integrated support to the food and life sciences sector in commercialising innovative early-stage ideas.
A seasoned professional in taking ideas from concept to commercial reality, Sarah identified an opportunity in the UK market to harness the creativity that exists alongside ground-breaking research which is emerging from academic groups and innovators in the private sector, and convert those concepts into real-world commercial applications and products.
Today SPG Innovation is multi-dimensional, with the consultancy arm of the business now complemented by a range of other services including:
- Concept Generation
- Early-stage Development and Commercialisation
- Grant Writing and Technical Project Management
- Product Development
- Regulatory Strategy
- R&D
Initially the focus for SPG Innovation centred around a number of key projects in universities and SMEs. Securing appropriate funding for products through successful bid and grant writing provided a key revenue stream alongside report writing detailing how to scale up the production of ingredients. A project with the University of Nottingham working on Smartsalt and pathfinder reports for other food projects proved a turning point.
This project led to SPG Innovation expanding and in 2017 the team grew with Rebecca McDowell joining to devise the commercial potential for the product in conjunction with the University.
With two full-time employees the company was able to add project management and product development pillars to the business whilst continuing to successfully secure hundreds of thousands of pounds in funding for clients and consulting on early-stage ideas.
Work with small businesses and other universities followed including offering expertise on an insect fish feeding project and advising on implementing methods for waste valorisation from food production.
In early 2020 SPG Innovation secured funding for its own laboratory in BioCity, Nottingham, enabling the product development arm to thrive. With the lab secured, the company was able to expand the team further recruiting R&D Scientists, Megan Day and Katherine Hurst with Holly Dunleavy as an administrator. The team is now able to offer full visibility of the supply chain, providing expertise in food development and exceptional knowledge of novel foods and regulatory services.
Case Studies
All Case StudiesGrow with Iris
Plant based food
SPG Innovation, Baker Perkins and the University of Leeds, are developing sustainable ingredients for the plant-based...
Reduced sodium salt project
With the support of Innovate UK funding, we are developing a highly innovative salt reduction ingredient...
Edible Insects
We started working with the University of Leeds at the beginning of 2020 where we partnered with Campden...
Inspro
We supported Inspro to identify and win funding for their innovative solutions within food waste...
Rerum
We worked with Rerum and Efficiency Technologies to accelerate development and introduce a technology to...
Oxford Healthtech Limited
Oxford Healthtech Ltd (OHL) is a small and highly ambitious team of scientists and engineers developing a novel...
Global Regulatory Services
We have worked with GRS for more than five years providing expertise to the food sector across a variety of...
Interface Polymers Ltd
Interface Polymers Ltd (IPL), a spin out from the University of Warwick, comprises a team of world-class polymer...