A report produced by BQ and the Business Growth Hub named HMG Paints Ltd. – the U.K.’s largest independent paint manufacturer – one of the 100 most innovative companies in Greater Manchester.
 
“Innovation is a way of life, really,” HMG Paints’ Managing Director John Falder said. “Practically, at its most fundamental, innovation is a way of being; a way of thinking. And it’s a way of looking at everything you do, whether it’s a product, a system, a process, and looking at it from a slightly odd standpoint. Not ‘how clever are we?’ But the opposite: ‘How can we substantially improve, develop, change, alter what we do and the way we operate?’”
 
HMG is involved in “a lot of” automotive color styling, per Falder.
 
“That work, you might think, would involve color,” he said. “But we make blue paint without any blue pigment. We make green paint without any green pigment. We’re using interference pigments and interference layers, creating the same effect as a butterfly’s wing, to create totally unique styling situations for automotive and the future of objects that don’t exist yet.”
 
Across Greater Manchester alone, Innovate U.K. has provided funding for over 600 innovation projects since 2004.
 
“Innovation is the key to unlocking future growth, job creation and prosperity for the region, and what these businesses are already doing is incredibly impressive in lots of ways,” said BQ’s Bryan Hoare.
 
“What the Innovation100 companies underline is that while innovation can often be related to products, it can also apply to developing disruptive business models, applying new processes and delivering new services. Innovation is across many different facets of business, across different sectors and different sizes of companies,” said Chris Greenhalgh, head of innovation at Business Growth Hub.