The Forest Economic Partnership (FEP) held another successful stakeholder meeting on Wednesday evening.

About 35 people from a broad spectrum of businesses attended the FEP's first stakeholder meeting of 2024 at the Speech House in Coleford.

Keynote speakers included Chris Griffiths and Louise Slade of DEEP, the ocean technology and exploratory company that's literally sinking £100m into a research facility at Tidenham in the Forest of Dean.

The DEEP project will see a 50-acre site known as Day House Quarry transformed into an underwater campus where experts will research how to "make humans aquatic".

The meeting heard how the 18m long and 6m high steel cylinder would have 32 windows. It is being built by robots using 3D printing.

Another speaker was Pete Marshall, founder and CEO of Outsource Automation Solutions, which has been a successful start-up after its founders had been affected by Covid redundancies. The company automises a lot of current jobs such as finance and HR, not necessarily replacing people but freeing them up to perform other roles.

The firm, which employs about 15 people, works with various NHS trusts, councils and housing associations.

The final speaker was Peter Allison of Together Gloucestershire which aims to persuade local councils and organisations and big companies to buy local.

Cirencester and Cheltenham Chambers of Commerce in association with the Federation of Small Businesses have created 'Together Gloucestershire' to address the issues surrounding procurement, across all sectors, and sizes of businesses.

Punchline-Gloucester.com editor Mark Owen, who attended the meeting, said: "It was well attended, it was interesting and it was informative. There were some big hitters in the room and there was a great buzz.

"It's impressive the quality of the guest speakers they are getting to these meetings, highlighting the innovative and quality of the businesses that are based in the Forest of Dean.

"Also what's impressive is the fact that Nigel Brinn, the chief executive of Forest of Dean District Council, actually comes to all the meetings and is mixing with the community."