Megagrowth ranking three

Foresight Group LLP, Sevenoaks.

Growth: 287.7%

"Constant innovation."

That’s the secret of growth, says Bernard Fairman, founder and managing partner of Foresight Group, a private equity investment company. "If you don’t constantly innovate, you try to sell a business model that’s past its sell-by date," he says.

In recent years, Foresight has lived up to its name by switching its investment focus to environmental infrastructure - waste-to-energy and recycling, for example - and renewable energy.

Two years ago, Foresight added solar infrastructure to its field of interest, becoming one of the first investment groups to launch a solar fund. It also own plants in Spain and Italy where it has a Rome office.

"Wind only blows for 34 per cent of the time," says Bexleyheath-born Fairman. "It’s very unpredictable and you can have a period of time when it’s not working. Solar is much more reliable."

Foresight looks after the interests of more than 16,000 individual and corporate investors and is one of the biggest venture capital trust (VCT) managers in the UK. The partnership employs some 30 people in Sevenoaks and Rome and has around £1bn under management.

Mr Fairman admits that "everything froze" at the height of the global financial crisis between September 2008 and March 2009 but "that’s turned round and things are gradually thawing. Banks are becoming more open to business."

While the business has few current links with Kent-based renewable enterprise, it expects rising demand for pelletised wood for fuel to change all that.

As a carbon neutral resource, pelletised wood is given official encouragement, and Kent’s tradition of paper-making, with its readysupply of trees, makes it a potentially ideal location for production.

The fuel can be used in power stations, schools and district heating schemes. "I see it growing rapidly over the next three years," says Mr Fairman.