Dragon’s Den man’s county contract

An entrepreneur who won backing in the Dragon’s Den is celebrating after signing a contract with Telford plastics giant Maxell.

Andrew Harsley starred on the BBC2 show and secured an investment of £150,000 from dragons James Caan and Duncan Bannatyne to develop his Rapstrap venture.

His waste-cutting cable tie invention could have sales of up to £20million within five years and he has secured a deal with Maxell which can produce one million units a week for the 35-year-old, who still lives at home with his parents in Grantham.

The tie has already been snapped up by garden centres, electrical and cable installers, the Philippines telecoms industry and a vineyard in Moldova.

Viewers of the programme watched Mr Harsley secure the investment for the Rapstrap, a reusable polyurethane band that can tie up bin bags, cables, plants and saplings, in exchange for a 50 per cent stake in his company. 

Mr Harsley said: “When I first came up with the idea, I could not believe someone else hadn’t thought of it. There’s a lot of waste with the nylon cable tie. The Rapstrap does the same job but is four times more effective in terms of cost and wastage. 

“We are using as many nylon cable ties as we are carrier bags in the UK, so that is a huge amount of plastic going into landfill each year.”