Our latest recruitment investment joint venture, Elite Talent Services officially launched on 1st November 2023 – as a professional permanent and contract recruitment specialist business headquartered in central Norwich.

The business will focus primarily on the IT, Engineering, and Professional Services sectors, and predominantly within the South East of England – but will be opportunistic when it comes to building their business and will support selected clients in other sectors, as required.

Elite Talent Services MD and founder, James Wardell commented on the launch,

“Having developed an expansive recruitment career working for other companies, I wanted to take this opportunity to create my own business. The support and investment I’ve received from Bluestones has helped make that dream a reality.

We’re  now actively signing up and working with new clients and candidates, with the early signs very promising. We’ve got a small team to start with, but big plans to scale quickly.”

From the initial investment enquiry in mid-September, we completed the full business launch within just six weeks – demonstrating our proven investment model, streamlined systems and workflows, and our ability to get new recruitment businesses up and running quickly.

Matt Cody, Investment Director at Bluestones commented,

“As a new business within the Group’s investment division, this is part of our growth strategy to continue building our pipeline of recruitment businesses that can scale at pace and, over time, join our core recruitment portfolio, expanding our offering across a wider range of sectors and geographies.”

Please take a look at the Elite Talent Services website HERE, and follow their company page on LinkedIn HERE.

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Recruitment Funding Solutions (RFS), the specialist recruitment funding provider within the Group’s portfolio of recruitment and staffing service companies, has launched a completely overhauled website, incorporating a range of design and functional changes that coincides with the addition of an all-new funding product too.

Recruitment Funding Solutions provides specialist recruitment funding support to recruitment agencies of all sizes and all stages of maturity, predominantly throughout the UK. Along with its well-established and extremely popular protected funding solution (RFS Protect), the business now offers RFS Evolve for typically larger and more well-established recruitment agencies that are ready and able to take on more of risk and debt management themselves. Both funding products are exceptionally easy to access, supported by recruitment specialists, and competitively priced in the marketplace.

RFS Protect

RFS Protect is our protected funding solution. It’s perfect for all agencies, but especially attractive for developing, early-stage and start-up agencies.

Find out more

RFS Evolve

RFS Evolve is for more established agencies that want to determine their own credit terms with clients, owning and managing a company’s risk profile.

Find out more

It’s important to remember that what Recruitment Funding Solutions does is different to the investment proposition from its parent company, Bluestones Group. At Bluestones, the investment approach is typically geared towards more fast-paced scaling and growth within the Group’s portfolio of businesses.

Find out more about what investment at Bluestones means HERE.

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Bluestones Supply Chain, a growing agency with multiple locations across England and Scotland, is the go-to recruitment company for a diverse range of driving and logistics clients, from small family-owned businesses to international blue-chip organisations. Whereas Cogent Staffing is one of Yorkshire’s most successful multi-disciplinary recruitment businesses.

Together, they’re part of the Generalist division within the Bluestones Investment Group, a multi-million pound revenue business, with offices throughout the UK and a balanced portfolio of staffing brands.

This joint initiative and the opening of a new office in the heart of Manchester’s industrial district, Trafford Park, brings together the collective resources of two-specialist recruitment agencies that focus on supporting organisations operating throughout the supply chain, manufacturing, logistics, and related industries.

This geographical expansion for both businesses will help support continued growth as the businesses support workers with finding temporary and permanent employment positions during the cost-of-living crisis.

Alongside the office opening, we’re also excited to announce the appointment of local recruitment expert, Danny Oakes, as Branch Manager. Danny specialises in placing workers in industrial, FMCG, engineering and commercial sectors both in temporary and permanent roles, across Greater Manchester and Lancashire. Danny has a wealth of recruitment experience, intrinsic local knowledge and an envied network of candidates, making him perfectly placed to support a diverse range of clients across the region.

On the joint initiative, new office opening and securing Danny to join the Cogent Staffing team, Sam Gaukroger, Managing Director of Cogent Staffing, said:

“We already have an extensive client base in Manchester and a presence in the area will allow us to strengthen and build on those relationships. We also recognise the wealth of talent that exists within Lancashire and our new office will give us access to a larger talent pool, that would not have been available to us before.

We’ve enjoyed an excellent working relationship with Bluestones Supply Chain over the years, so combining forces, expertise and resource on this new venture is extremely exciting. What’s more, we couldn’t be happier to have Danny heading up our new venture. Securing his services is a major coup for the business and we’re thrilled to have him on board.”

Krista Flanagan, Managing Director at Bluestones Supply Chain added:

“Originally from the North West, I’m thrilled to be extending our operation into Lancashire. The opening of the Manchester branch, in collaboration with Cogent Staffing, will accelerate our growth plans further following a hugely successful move into the North East in 2018.

“Our new Branch Manager, Kimberley, has a great network of contacts and second to none recruitment expertise, so I’m confident this move will only enhance Bluestones Supply Chain’s presence on the nationwide stage.”

On the new initiative, Trish Stratford, Divisional CEO at Bluestones Investment Group said:

“Bluestones Investment Group is delighted to be supporting Cogent Staffing and Bluestones Supply Chain with further investment for the next stage of their growth journey. It’s great to see collaboration across the group, leveraging our collective strengths to continue to deliver exceptional services to clients and candidates alike across the industrial and logistics sectors.”

This joint initiative ensures that client companies can have a genuine end-to-end supply chain solution that supports everything from the initial manufacturing process and warehouse operations to logistics and transportation.

Whether it’s ad-hoc supply of individuals, recruiting permanent personnel, or providing on-site managed services, our new joint initiative has it covered. With a tried and tested approach, an enviable client portfolio, industry-leading technologies, and a well-experienced management and delivery team, Cogent Staffing, alongside Bluestones Supply Chain, can offer a genuine integrated solution and provides a single, focused service for both its clients and its workers.

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We are delighted to announce we’ve secured a Two Star – Outstanding to Work For 2022 – Best Companies rating; our third successive Two Star rating.

 

Steve Pendergast, Group CEO commented,

We’re a people business first and foremost – so it’s essential that we look after our employees; that they feel engaged and valued; and that they believe in what we’re doing and where the business is going.

To secure a third successive Two Star rating in the Best Companies employee engagement survey is a fantastic achievement and everyone should feel rightly proud of what we’ve created here.

Best Companies is an employee engagement specialist organisation that provides meaningful insight into how employees view the companies they work for.

Through a detailed, anonymous survey, valuable insights are secured which can help the business understand their employees and ensure they’re properly engaged with the organisation.

The regional and sector lists will be announced later in the year, where we hope to replicate (and improve on) our previous year’s placement.

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Bluestones Group is pleased to announce the appointment of Tim Trotter as its new Chairman.

Tim joins Bluestones as a successful entrepreneur with over thirty years’ experience in business and support services, financial services and media.

He currently has a wide variety of international interests which include both public and private companies.

Tim is Chairman of Glenfern, the leading management consultancy, Instinctif Partners, CC Group amongst others. He was a founding shareholder of Citywire and a co-founder of Luther Pendragon. Alantra UK, Alpha FMC, FC Business Intelligence, Fintel, Lucid, Nigel Wright and PEI Media were other successful business interests.

Prior to this, Tim was the Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive of Ludgate Group, the international business communications consultancy. He established operations in London, Brussels, Frankfurt, Hong Kong and New York and developed a joint venture in India. He was also responsible for the successful introduction of two leading private equity companies to the business: Cinven and Granville. Tim later initiated and implemented the sale of Ludgate to Interpublic and was subsequently appointed Deputy Chairman of Interpublic’s global PR business interests which included Weber Shandwick.

Commenting on Tim’s appointment, Group CEO Steve Pendergast said,

“Tim’s track record of entrepreneurship speaks for itself. He’s clearly going to be someone that can add value, speak from experience, and help support us in delivering our vision”.

On the appointment Tim also commented,

“Bluestones is an impressive business with a very successful track record and leadership team. I look forward to helping the team achieve their full and significant potential”.

You can find out more about the Bluestones Group by browsing this website.

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