About The Green Block

Berkshire-based The Green Block Consulting Ltd (TGB) operates across the UK, advising clients such as airports and shopping centres on facilities and waste management issues via its consultancy arm, and separately providing a physical solution (its patented Mobile Segregation Unit -- MSU) for on-site waste sorting linked to its proprietary online platform, Plaza. Plaza is a waste management data software solution, which delivers credible, auditable, and real-time data, thus allowing users to make data-driven decisions, optimise waste segregation, see how much revenue they are earning from waste sales, and also fulfil regulatory compliance demands on ESG and carbon emissions.

Customers include rail network companies, Stansted Airport Group (MAG), Birmingham Airport, The Southbank, Go-Ahead Group, Capita, Network Rail, The Elizabeth Line Sodexo and Arcus. Co-founder Adam Williams explains that “the waste management sector is quite immature, particularly when it comes to its use of technology; and from 2027 a new law comes into effect that will make it mandatory that all waste is tracked digitally. At the Green Block, we've been doing that since 2020.”

The Challenge

The company launched in 2018, when co-founders Adam Williams and Jack Williams pitched the idea of the MSUs, the software management platform, and the resulting efficiency gains via data analytics, to Network Rail. As Adam Williams explains, “we were disrupting a market, we were creating something that the industry had never seen. Once we got a believer, and it was a significant believer, Network Rail, we needed to go and create the MSU, the data analytics software, and the online platform.”

Network Rail signed on as the first client, but for a number of years everything the company built and developed was largely self-financed and then funded through R&D tax credits.

Dissatisfied with its existing banking arrangements, TGB was looking for ways to raise funding in anticipation of the new requirements for digital tracking from 2027. In discussions with NatWest, Adam remembers, “one of NatWest’s people saw that we had a technology system and asked what does that do? We showed them, and then they explained about the NatWest High Growth IP-backed loan - it was just unbelievable news. We created a software system that solved our clients' problems. But NatWest opened our eyes to the value of what we created and how we could actually use that value to raise finance. We'd never been shown anything like this before.”

The Solution

The NatWest High Growth IP-backed loan was launched in January 2024 in partnership with IP evaluation experts Inngot. IP-rich scaleup SMEs can borrow as little as £250,000, up to a ceiling of £10m. Loans are secured against up to 50% of the value of the firm’s qualifying intangible assets, as determined by Inngot’s sophisticated IP identification and valuation toolkit, and by NatWest’s own credit checks. The IP-backed loan targets growth companies which are rich in intangible assets, but have few tangible assets, making it difficult or even impossible for them to get traditional lending from banks. Software, patents, copyrights, trademarks, registered designs and other intangibles can be valued and used as collateral.

The Green Block certainly fulfilled the criteria of being high growth (it was listed as one of the top 50 growth companies in the UK Fast Growth Index in 2024 and 2025). The question then was how much was its IP worth? To establish that, Adam and his finance team used the Inngot online platform to establish what IP the company had and the value it actually delivered to the business. NatWest then used that figure to calculate how much it was prepared to lend against the IP.

Adam says that the Inngot process “was like a fully managed solution, more or less turnkey. The portal was very good where we had to upload documents etc. I think the most thing I was impressed with was the back-of-house support. You understood very quickly that someone was actually reading these; it wasn't just a tick-box exercise, someone was actually reading it, and coming back with comments which was fantastic. A real game changer.”

The Green Block successfully negotiated a total of £3.6m in growth funding from NatWest, £3m provided by RBSIF invoice financing to replace a much more expensive Factoring facility and £600,000 provided via the HGIP loan facility, secured against the value of the company’s IP, including the patents in the MSU units, the software developed for the online platform, and associated data rights.

With the law changing from next year, “our clients and the sector are kind of leaning into our new process,” Adam says, so investment in the business is a priority.

“We've invested heavily in technology again, so we've got a version two of our Plaza system. We've left money in the business as well that will help operational grow. We've also bought some tangible assets - our MSU units take probably 12 to 14 weeks to manufacture and cost around £100,000 each. If we have a couple of those pre-modular builds waiting to be rolled out, the quicker we can service new clients, the quicker we get to our operational expenditure run rates, the better for our EBITDA.”

The Result

£3.6 million finance package approved by NatWest

The Green Block received £3.6m in growth funding from NatWest, including £600,000 backed by its IP.