Sponsors – 2021
Belfast City Council is NI’s largest local authority; 60 Elected Members represent nine political parties.
As civic leaders, we seek to improve quality of life for our citizens and provide services and facilities including planning, parks and leisure, refuse and recycling and community services.
We also focus on attracting inward investment, building international relations, regenerating our city centre, promoting culture and the arts, tourism, community and economic development and regulating and licensing activities relating to environmental health, consumer protection, building and public safety.
We have a representative role on bodies and boards including education and health; and a consultative role in relation to functions conducted by other government bodies and agencies on planning, water, roads and housing issues.
Our first Local Development Plan (LDP) will set out a 15 year framework to address Belfast’s future economic and social needs, complemented by the Belfast Agenda 2035, Belfast’s first Community Plan, which has established an agreed set of ambitious economic, social and environmental outcomes between public agencies, businesses and communities.
We published Belfast’s first Resilience Strategy in 2020, outlining 20 strategic programmes to reduce emissions and protect the city from the effects of climate change.
We are also leading on plans for a transformative £1 billion Belfast Region City Deal which will strengthen the region’s business offer in growth sectors such as life and health sciences, digital and creative industries, and advanced manufacturing. It will support next generation digital capabilities, boost tourism and support our region’s regeneration, underpinned by infrastructure developments and investment in skills to connect people to jobs and services.
And we are founding members of Innovation City Belfast, a partnership created in 2021 to drive innovation in support of inclusive growth, and to establish the city as a destination for innovation and investment.
For more information, go to www.belfastcity.gov.uk
Belfast Harbour is Northern Ireland’s principal gateway to trade handling over 70% of the region’s seaborne imports and exports. Belfast Harbour plays a key role in keeping daily life in Northern Ireland moving and its critical role in keeping essential goods and supply chains flowing smoothly during the current pandemic is evidence of that.
It is a key economic hub for logistics, trade and tourism with more than 24 million tonnes of cargo and over half a million freight vehicles passing through the Port in a normal year as well as 1.6 million ferry and cruise ship passengers.
One of Belfast Harbour’s core strategic ambitions is to be a ‘Green Port’ and during 2021 Belfast Harbour signed a ‘Prosperity Agreement’ with Northern Ireland Environment Agency which saw a commitment to reducing CO2 emissions, reducing waste, improving air and water quality and enhancing both terrestrial and marine biodiversity.
Belfast Harbour is home to a vibrant mix of 760 businesses, with almost 30,000 people working across multiple sectors, including commercial and residential real estate, film studios, ICT, R&D, heavy engineering and aerospace firms. In 2019 the 2,000-acre Harbour Estate hosted more than five million visits.
Belfast Harbour is a major contributor to Northern Ireland’s economy and as a Trust Port and one of the region’s most significant infrastructure developers, all profits are re-invested for the long-term benefit of its customers and wider society.
In 2020 Belfast Harbour had a committed pipeline of £87.4 million of strategically significant projects that will help deliver its ‘Port for Everyone’ vision of becoming a world leading regional port and an iconic waterfront for Belfast. In the past 10 years Belfast Harbour has invested over £250 million in port infrastructure and estate regeneration.
MRP Prelytix™ is the only enterprise-class predictive ABM platform. For organizations that serve multiple partners, lines of business, geographies, or industries, MRP Prelytix is the only ABM platform to empower sales and marketing teams to simplify their environment’s complexity and produce measurable and high-performance conversion, pipeline velocity, and closed revenue. Applying the industry’s only real-time predictive analytics and data management, we fuel 1,000 ABM programs across six continents to coordinate, execute, and optimize their ABM programs using eight channels, in over 20 languages. Powered by KX, MRP Prelytix sits on top of the fastest streaming analytics database in the world.
For more information visit: www.mrpfd.com
Phoenix Natural Gas was established in 1996 to bring natural gas to the Greater Belfast area of Northern Ireland, where there was no natural gas distribution.
Since then local, national and international partnerships across the natural gas industry have delivered an investment of over £1bn into the Northern Ireland economy and the wider natural gas industry now provides employment to over 2,500 people.
Now as the owner and operator of the largest natural gas distribution network in Northern Ireland, Phoenix Natural Gas is responsible for the distribution of natural gas to our 235,000 connected consumers.
Ensuring a safe and secure supply of energy for consumers has been the driving force of our business, coupled with continuing to provide a high-quality experience for consumers making the move to natural gas from more carbon emitting fuel sources.
As a result of moving to natural gas from other forms of fuel, natural gas consumers have enabled 11 million tonnes of cumulative CO2 to be avoided from entering the atmosphere, with further opportunity to increase this further as more consumers come onto the network.
Phoenix Natural Gas continues to be innovative and is exploring opportunities for renewable gas solutions through its existing network, providing even lower carbon solutions to households across its licence area.
Strategic Power Projects is an all-Ireland renewable energy company.
We are passionate about renewable energy and are committed to driving change and embracing the advances in Solar PV, Battery Energy Storage Systems and AD Biomethane technology to deliver new sources of clean energy throughout Ireland.
Ulster University is a modern, forward-looking institution with student experience at the very heart of everything we do. Our high-quality teaching, informed by world-leading research across key sectors, boosts the economy and has a positive impact on the lives of people around the world.
Ulster University’s new and enhanced Belfast campus is one of the largest higher education capital builds in Europe and will transform higher education in the city.
It marks a new chapter in delivery of the University’s mission to offer the best possible learning and teaching environment for staff and students, and to play our part in the economic development of local communities and the ambitions of North Belfast, the wider city and region.
The estimated investment regeneration impact of the Belfast campus development is circa £1.4bn, representing an urban regeneration multiplier ratio of 1:5.
For society, the campus offers the opportunity to engage, learn and enrich our lives in a welcoming and innovative environment where students, academics, business and local communities are connected through ever-expanding possibilities.
The Belfast Campus catalyses a reimagining of the teaching and learning experience that is deployed across all our campuses, accelerating innovation in how we do things and ensuring implementation of best practice across all our campuses.
The new campus will incubate and develop the cream of our creative talent, scientific expertise and enquiry, engineering innovation and entrepreneurial drive all under one roof.
For more information, please visit www.ulster.ac.uk
Ulster Bank NI is part of the NatWest Group – a relationship bank for a digital world. We champion potential; breaking down barriers and building financial confidence so the 19 million people, families and businesses we serve in communities throughout the UK and Ireland can rebuild and thrive. If our customers succeed, so will we.
NatWest Group has a leading retail business and is the largest business and commercial bank in the UK. We offer market-leading digital capabilities combined with expert human support to personal customers, and we are the biggest supporter of the business sector – banking around 1 in 4 businesses across the UK and Ireland, from start-ups to multi-nationals.
There are three focus areas of Our Purpose where we can make a meaningful contribution to our customers, colleagues and communities: climate, enterprise and learning. We will lead the fight against climate change by playing an active role in the transition to a low-carbon economy. As the champion of businesses in the UK and Ireland we will remove barriers to enterprise and help the economy build back better. And we will build financial capability by helping those who want to take control of their finances and their futures to make the most of their money.
The strength of our culture underpins everything we do. We deliver on our promises and live by our values as one bank; serving customers, working together, doing the right thing and thinking long-term.