Merry Christmas from everyone on Sandwell Council’s Business Growth Team (have you seen our new page that tells you who we are?).

Our news and events pages will be quiet for the next week while we’re away celebrating Christmas and the new year with our loved ones. But if you’re using this downtime to hone your business development plans for 2018, there’s plenty for you to look at.

Visit our business services landing page for a full menu of the services we offer to local businesses. We added lots of new content in 2017, including pages on workplace wellbeing, social value, energy saving and trading legally. One of our most valuable pages for local firms focuses on access to finance, giving details of grants and funding to help you achieve your business aspirations.

You can also view details of Sandwell’s Top 50 fastest growing companies, published in the summer. Inspiration for 2018, perhaps?

Something we’ve enjoyed working on this year is #madeinsandwell Monday. In case you haven’t seen it yet, on most Mondays we share a profile of a different Sandwell business, on Think Sandwell and through our Twitter and LinkedIn accounts. We do it to celebrate everything great that has been manufactured, engineered, produced, grown, devised, dreamed up and delivered in the borough of Sandwell. From precision engineers to training specialists, all the profiles we’ve written and shared so far are here . . . and please get in touch if you’d like us to consider your Sandwell business for a #madeinsandwell Monday profile in 2018. We’ve focused a lot on manufacturing so far and it would be excellent to hear from some service sector businesses now too.

While we mention it, please do follow us on Twitter if you’re not already (@thinkSandwell) and join our Think Sandwell Business Network on LinkedIn. The latter is quiet at the moment but we’d love to hear your thoughts on using it to greater effect – perhaps for discussing business best practice or sparking some healthy debate?

That just leaves us to thank you for your interest in Think Sandwell this year, and say how much we look forward to supporting you and your business again in 2018. Have a happy, peaceful holiday!