Yorkshire firm using AI technology to help food manufacturers plans to double size of local workforce

The company’s chief executive is Tom Clayton, who is also the founder of maintenance engineering and asset management specialist 53North.

IntelliAM is acquiring 53North to to become the company’s consultancy division as part of ambitious expansion plans for the group.

Mr Clayton said the business hopes to add another 40 employees over the next two years, doubling the size of the current workforce.

He said its existing South Yorkshire location is an ideal base for the business for several reasons.

"We are proud Yorkshire people and we believe we are in the right space,” he said. "We are in the manufacturing heartlands which is what Silicon Valley companies don’t have but we are also in the right space for data science. Sheffield and Leeds are where the largest pools of data scientists exist in this country.”

IntelliAM says it drives efficiencies by harnessing hundreds of millions of data points from clients’ machines and operational systems to provide actionable insights in areas such as productivity, reliability and supply-chain optimisation, as well as energy efficiency and sustainability.

Mr Clayton said the firm’s technology is already helping its clients in areas like improving the throughput of products – citing the example of a milk manufacturer which has had to up its production levels after winning a contract with a large supermarket group.

He said IntelliAM is aiming to become a market leader in the field of AI technology for food and beverage companies and believes it can help such firms lower their costs and improve the availability of their products in a way that will have a positive impact on consumers.

Mr Clayton said IntelliAM can help such companies with challenges such as amount of waste produced, ESG targets and rising energy costs.

"It ticks a lot of boxes. We are doing something genuinely different with the amount of data we are actively collecting.”

IntelliAM is part-owned by Sheffield-based Yorkshire AI Labs, which was set up by former WANdisco boss David Richards to invest in regional companies which could benefit from AI.

Mr Richards is the chair of the company while its board includes Professor Keith Ridgway CBE, founder of the Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre at the University of Sheffield and leading businesswoman Dame Julie Kenny, founding chair of the Wentworth Woodhouse Preservation Trust.

The company raised an initial £5m from a placing and is expected to have a market cap of £17.9m after the 53 North acquisition is completed today.