They all attended the Birmingham Business Expo B2B event at BCFC
Start-up virtual CFO provider, Suncroft, coffee machine supplier Nespresso and artificial intelligence consultancy, The AI Pros, were among the brands that attended the Birmingham Business Expo 2025.
The day-long B2B event, attended by several hundred people, took place at Birmingham City Football Club’s home ground, St Andrew’s @ Knighthead.
After 20 years in the corporate world, including a spell in the Middle East, Ben Lightfoot launched Suncroft Strategic Finance Partners earlier this year to offer SMEs expert financial leadership on an outsourced basis – in the form of a “virtual CFO.”
“We provide senior financial expertise across a broad suite of services to shape your business and help you to deliver growth and drive profit, without the fixed cost commitment,” said Ben, from Staffordshire.
Representing The AI Pros was Liam Hynes. The nationwide consultancy offers its clients bespoke AI-based solutions to a raft of business tasks, including video editing, general admin and customer service with the aim of making things more efficient.
On whether it is possible to tell that you might be speaking to an AI bot rather than a human being, Liam said: “No, not really, because we record the voices, which the AI then replicates. It’s almost impossible to tell – and this stuff is only going to get better in future.”
Jon Ottley, business development manager for Lyreco, B2B delivery partner for Nespresso, said the company’s coffee capsules were made of aluminium, which is fully recyclable.
The firm supplies its corporate customers with recycling bags both for the aluminium pods and for leftover coffee grounds, which are used in agriculture as a soil conditioner/fertiliser.
