HelCat Training enjoy major growth in town

Caithness-based HelCat Training has completed the final stages of an expansion at Thurso.

HelCat, which delivers theoretical and practical health and safety training to businesses throughout the UK, has grown its premises from one room to eight over 18 months amid a raft of new contract wins.

The extra teaching space has allowed it to bring in six extra specialist staff and diversify its training services, which now range from outdoor forklift and scaffolding training to theory in IT and leadership.

Clients include people who have recently become unemployed, those looking to boost their skills, offshore workers and public sector organisations.

HelCat founder Helen Mackay said: “Our reputation for delivering outstanding training has attracted more contracts, and contracts of longer length, from companies based all over the UK.

“Our aim was to provide clients with a more comprehensive training offering but to do this we needed to our site.”

The overall expansion project was supported by a £210,000 funding package from HSBC, allocated from the bank’s £10billion SME fund to support small and medium-sized enterprise.

Of the total pot, £500million is specifically designated to support Scottish firms and rebalance the economy outwith London.

Andrew Little, head of business banking in Scotland, HSBC, said: “We were more than happy to support HelCat’s evolving business needs.” firstly expand