Working together to help Welsh businesses grow; ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE.

BUSINESSES can work together to improve their chances of winning tenders from public sector procurement opportunities. Working together in a consortium offers many other benefits, too: shared risk, shared marketing approaches, shared resources and potentially increased profits.

The Wales Co-operative Centre has been assisting businesses to work together in consortia for several years. A consortium is an association of different companies working together as a separate entity to deliver joint aims and objectives. A co-operative consortium is 'a co-operative that is owned and controlled by the people or organisations that use its services'.

Businesses can come together to share costs, services or a common facility to help members improve their business performance. The consortia structure allows a range of opportunities for growth across a variety of business sectors. In Wales these include tourism, food and drink, retail, manufacturing and agriculture. The structure is flexible, adaptable and is an effective tool for helping like-minded businesses achieve objectives that they cannot achieve by working in isolation.

In Maesteg, Young Llynfi Ifanc Limited is a new consortium made up of four organisations from the Llynfi Valley - Noddfa Community Project Limited, Llynfi Valley 11-25 Project Limited, Nantyfyllon Youth Club and Maesteg Town Council, who came together to bid for youth work projects in the area.

They are currently celebrating winning two contracts. The consortium will deliver detached youth work in areas identified as potential crime hot spots and drug and alcohol misuse education and advice on the run-up to Christmas. The businesses believe that they wouldn't have been in a position to deliver this new work if they hadn't created the consortium.

With public sector procurement increasingly focussed on corporate social responsibility and a desire to give work to local businesses, consortia working offers an opportunity to social enterprises and SMEs to work together to get work they couldn't win by themselves.