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Business News Wales
21-05-2025
- Business
- Business News Wales
Start-up to Support Scale-ups Launched by Leading Welsh Business Figures
Pic (C) HUW JOHN, CARDIFF A new start-up dedicated to supporting scale-ups has been launched by three Welsh business figures. Nigel Griffiths, Angharad Neagle, and Matthew Tossell have partnered to form Tailwind, a specialist growth enablement consultancy designed to help business leaders achieve scale. The trio has assembled a diverse team of entrepreneurs and C-suite executives who have all experienced the highs and lows of leading companies and navigating the challenges of growth. Nigel, Angharad and Matthew first discovered their shared views on the need for experienced, practical peer support for business leaders eager to scale effectively while serving on the Cardiff Capital Region (CCR) Business Council, where Nigel was chair between 2021 and 2024. While a wide range of business advice exists across the public and private sectors, the group identified a gap: comprehensive support to help businesses scale up, led exclusively by people who have founded or run businesses themselves. The three are particularly passionate about supporting Wales's indigenous businesses across all sectors to scale, citing that medium-sized enterprises often foster innovation, create jobs, strengthen local supply chains, and invest in their communities. Tailwind is currently in the process of onboarding its first clients and so far, has brought together 14 growth partners with diverse business experience. Although Tailwind is, by definition, a start-up, the team collectively brings hundreds of years of experience and has helped generate millions of pounds in growth across hundreds of businesses. (C) HUW JOHN, CARDIFF Tailwind co-founder and lead growth architect Nigel Griffiths co-founded and scaled FD Systems to £16 million before its sale to K3 plc. He later grew Certus from £1 million to £10 million turnover, before exiting to SysGroup plc. In 2020, he invested in Lexington Corporate Finance, tripling its run-rate fee income before its acquisition by FRP Advisory in 2024, where he remains a consultant. Nigel said: 'We want to support ambitious leaders to scale their businesses and unlock all the benefits that brings to stakeholders, local communities, and the economy. 'We're looking for clients who have already achieved some success but are eager to elevate their business to the next level. Often, leadership teams are consumed by the day-to-day running of the business, leaving little executive bandwidth to focus on growth. We understand how frustrating that can be — that's why we created Tailwind.' Each new client engagement begins with Tailwind's proprietary TRANSFORM audit, based on decades of collective experience in driving business growth. The audit identifies growth inhibitors and enablers, allowing Tailwind to develop and execute a targeted growth plan in partnership with clients. The outcomes of the audit drive the priority actions, but common areas include sales and marketing solutions and optimising technology for growth. Tailwind will also provide pre- and post-deal services to investors and lenders, including commercial due diligence, post-investment value creation, and exit-readiness planning and execution. Co-founder and chairman Matthew Tossell takes up a non-executive role alongside his position as senior partner at Hugh James. As managing partner between 1999 and 2011, he led the firm into the UK's Top 100 law firms having more than quadrupled its revenue. He also founded the firm's first volume legal services unit for the banking industry, later consolidating this and other volume units, into Involegal LLP, where he served as CEO and grew the business to a £30 million valuation within three years. Matthew said: 'Tailwind complements the existing business support ecosystem but importantly fills a significant gap by offering specialist growth support through our TRANSFORM methodology and hands-on guidance from experienced growth partners who have all led businesses themselves. 'Wales is our home, and we are passionate about helping Welsh businesses scale. However, we'll also be working with clients across the UK to deliver targeted, specialist support for growth.' Co-founder and chief executive Angharad Neagle, previously CEO of Freshwater, has been supporting business leaders to achieve growth for more than 20 years and will lead the day-to-day operations at Tailwind. Angharad said: 'We've assembled an experienced and talented group of entrepreneurs and executives who offer practical solutions and empathy for CEOs and founders. 'We believe that working with our partners who have already helped create millions of pounds of growth across hundreds of other businesses will give our clients the confidence to innovate and execute change quickly so they can scale up effectively.' Tailwind's growth partners — all entrepreneurs and C-suite executives — include Jim Henderson, who is the architect of the TRANSFORM methodology, David Watts, Simon Thomas, Geoff Hancock, Nick Fluck, Sean Farrington, Darryl Morton and Warren Lewis. Tailwind is in discussions with more experts to keep expanding its team of growth partners. For more information visit
Forbes
08-04-2025
- Business
- Forbes
The Business Case For Climate Adaptation
A dried out bank of a nearly water empty dam is pictured on a farm in Piket Bo-berg, Piketberg, ... More north of Cape Town, on March 7, 2018 as a result of a three-year-long drought. - Fruit farmers in the Piket Bo-Berg, who have been struggling with drought for the past three years, had to adapt their ways of farming to still be able to produce a profitable harvest. (Photo by WIKUS DE WET / AFP) (Photo by WIKUS DE WET/AFP via Getty Images) Climate adaptation needs a business case. For years we rarely talked about adaptation because it would constitute 'giving up'. After-all, why adapt to a warming planet when renewable energy, electric vehicles and carbon capture technologies can limit global warming? It is more common to discuss adaptation now, but we are late to the game. In fact, it took over twenty conferences of the parties (COP's) to reach a significant global adaptation milestone when the Paris Agreement at COP 21 in 2015 established the Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA). Why even focus on climate adaptation? Climate adaptation is often understood as the complement to climate mitigation. Mitigation is defined as 'reducing the flow of heat-trapping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.' Renewable energy, carbon capture utilization and storage, decarbonized building materials and manufacturing, among many other critical solutions all fall under the mitigation category. Yet, as the planet becomes hotter, and staying below the 1.5 C threshold is less likely, we have to adapt. Put differently, climate change is too large, complicated and fast-moving a phenomenon to rely purely on mitigation strategies. Case in point - in 2021 we crossed the one trillion dollar threshold in global climate finance for the first time. However, we made history again in 2023 when the United States experienced the most billion-dollar climate-linked disasters in its history. This juxtaposition between progress and damage highlights the adaptation imperative and conundrum - even though we need to rapidly increase investment into low and no GHG emission technologies, global temperatures are rising regardless and we need to rapidly adapt. Primarily, adaptation solutions focus on minimizing and addressing the impacts of climate hazards - e.g. floods, heatwaves, wildfires, and extreme weather events that hurt physical infrastructure and human livelihoods. Tailwind, an investment firm and ecosystem builder focusing on adaptation and resilience solutions, defines adaptation as 'products and services designed to predict, prevent, mitigate, and enable recovery'. However, while public awareness around climate adaptation has grown, we come to another hurdle - funding it. Bottlenecks and barriers for adaptation funding The global climate adaptation funding gap is massive. Recent estimates suggest annual adaptation funding needs are an estimated $366 billion through 2030, while current international public finance flows reached just $28 billion in 2022. However, Tailwind finds that the demand for adaptation solutions could be many times hire at over 1 trillion dollars annually. And when it comes to climate tech funding specifically, Tailwind's research suggests that between 2019 and 2023 3% of climate tech funding went to adaptation-focused startups, even though roughly 12% of climate tech firms concentrate on adaptation in some way. So why is there a gap? While there is no single reason that can explain the large shortfall, here are a handful of common ones. How have we pitched adaptation investment to investors? So far we have used a few different pitches to entice investors. For example, we often point to the enormous funding gap around adaptation. It's used to signal that adaptation is overlooked and therefore undervalued. Similarly, we have also tried the approach of urgency - highlighting economic and social losses due to climate change to attract investors. However, a crisis does not necessarily lead to more investment. In fact, this pitch may have the opposite effect. Already, we are seeing insurance companies retreat from areas of high climate risk. We have also tried to assign responsibility to certain countries to fund adaptation. The loss and damage funding discussions assert that although wealthier, industrialized countries have created the bulk of emissions worldwide, lower-income less resilient countries bear the brunt of global warming. Thus, lower income countries need to rapidly adapt to a warming planet, arguably more-so than wealthier ones who must foot the bill for the loss and damage caused in the Global South. Each of these approaches has worked to varying degrees - gaps can spotlight areas where investors can be catalytic; urgency can help large foreign aid and philanthropic organizations target their funding; while guilt can help some feel an obligation to give away their money to those in need. However, these pitches alone will not fill such enormous funding gaps. Building the business case The below list is a starting point for rethinking and reshaping the business case for climate adaptation. It is less-so a pitch, and more a process for helping educate the market and creating a playing field for building and investing in adaptation solutions. Private capital has so far been significantly underutilized in addressing adaptation and resilience needs. Without a compelling case for investors, one that educates them on the risks and opportunities, provides them with an attractive pipeline and accounts for measurement challenges and discrepancies, this gap will persist. Investing in adaptation is an opportunity and an imperative, and more investors will come on board. However, we need to expedite the pace of onboarding, and building a strong business case is essential to this effort.
Yahoo
01-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Tailwind Concessions Acquires Kind Hospitality's Phoenix-Mesa Airport Panera Bread Concession
WILMINGTON, N.C., April 1, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Tailwind Hospitality, Inc. (dba "Tailwind Concessions" or "Tailwind"), headquartered in Wilmington, North Carolina, today announced the acquisition of the Panera Bread concession located at Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport from Kind Hospitality. Tailwind previously acquired four food and beverage concessions at Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport from Kind Hospitality in September 2024. With the addition of the Panera Bread concession, Tailwind is now the majority owner and primary operator of all F&B concessions at the growing ~1 million enplanement airport. Tailwind initially partnered with Kind Hospitality's founder, Nava Thursaisingam, in the fall of 2024 when the Company acquired four proprietary concession concepts, including restaurants and breweries. Jeff Switzer, CEO of Tailwind, states "This additional acquisition of the remaining F&B concession demonstrates our commitment to the Mesa-Phoenix Gateway airport and Tailwind's commitment to providing best-in-class service to its travelers." In November 2021, Palladin Consumer Retail Partners partnered with Tailwind and its existing management team to recapitalize the Company and acquire a smaller competitor, Air Host, creating a leading airport concession platform focused on small and mid-sized airports throughout the United States. Since the investment, Tailwind has more than doubled its footprint while further building out its offering of nationally known brands and local concepts, expanded into larger airports, completed several other acquisitions and now operates 162 concessions in 60 airports and train stations across the continental United States and Alaska. ABOUT TAILWIND HOSPITALITY (TAILWIND CONCESSIONS) Founded in 2004 and based in Wilmington, North Carolina, Tailwind Hospitality, LLC ("Tailwind" or the "Company") is a leading airport concessionaire specializing in operating full-service restaurants, bars, retail and gift shops predominantly in non-hub, primary and regional airports and train stations located throughout the United States. The Company currently operates 162 revenue centers in 60 airports and trains stations and, in the majority of locations, is the sole and exclusive concessionaire. Tailwind has focused on developing unique, location-specific venues at each of its airports, adapting to local culture, tastes and needs. ABOUT PALLADIN CONSUMER RETAIL PARTNERS (PCRP) Palladin Consumer Retail Partners ("PCRP" or "Palladin") is a Boston-based private investment firm, founded in 1998, that focuses primarily on the retail and consumer products sectors in North America and Europe. Our team has a strong investment and operating track record; the Principals of PCRP have invested in, financed, or managed over 100 public and private retail and consumer products companies. We pride ourselves on working closely with management teams to create value through strategic and operational initiatives. PCRP strives to provide its portfolio companies with the advantages of a strategic partner and the operating flexibility and incentives of a financial investor. Current and former investments include M@C Discount, Southeast Mechanical, Tailwind Concessions, Leapfrog Brands, Decowraps, PB Metro, Nic+Zoe, Splash Car Wash, KT Tape, InMotion Entertainment, J. McLaughlin, Things Remembered, Restoration Hardware, Spencer Gifts, Jamba Juice, Worldlynx, Multi-Flow, and Kwik-Tek. CONTACT: Tailwind HospitalityJeff Switzer, CEOswitzer@ Palladin Consumer Retail PartnersPatricia Donnellypdonnelly@ View original content to download multimedia: SOURCE Palladin Consumer Retail Partners, LLC Sign in to access your portfolio
