Focus Consultants helps secure £2.46m Heritage Lottery Fund grant for Peterborough Cathedral

Heritage and funding experts at Focus Consultants are celebrating the news that Peterborough Cathedral has been awarded a £2.46m grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF).

Nottingham-based Focus Consultants was appointed to assist the management of the second-round bid to the HLF. News of its success means that Focus has now helped to secure more than £925m of grant assistance for a range of projects and businesses across the UK since 1994.

“It is great news that the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) has awarded a £2.46m grant for the ‘Peterborough 900: Letting it speak for itself' project, which is introducing ambitious improvements to Peterborough Cathedral to mark the 900th anniversary of its founding,” said Steven Fletcher, partner at Focus Consultants.

“Focus worked with a number of specialists to develop the scheme design for the planned new Heritage, Visitor and Education Centre at Peterborough Cathedral, which is the first phase in a multi-million pound project. Other developments being planned for the future include a new Cathedral and Community Music School and improvements to the cathedral, its furnishings and its precincts.”

Focus Consultants specialises in creative approaches to securing funding packages, and has worked to help a number of significant heritage, ecclesiastical, arts, culture and leisure schemes gain grants from a range of funding sources.

It is part of the team that earlier this year secured a £3.55m grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) for work on England’s second oldest cathedral, Rochester Cathedral. Focus is project manager and quantity surveyor on a project at the cathedral which is introducing new visitor displays in the crypt and library, while improving access to the atmospheric spaces and showcasing the cathedral's centrepiece manuscript: the Textus Roffensis.

Focus has also been successful in helping clients with Regional Growth Fund (RGF) bids. Engineering firm Bifrangi secured up to £4.8m of growth funding from the RGF to develop a research and development centre in Lincoln after working closely with Focus to develop the bid.

The Very Reverend Charles Taylor, Dean of Peterborough said: “This award is very good news both for Peterborough Cathedral, for the city and the wider region. It affirms our plans to make our cathedral more accessible to new visitors, not only physically but also intellectually and culturally. This can only be good for the regional life and economy. We are enormously grateful to HLF for recognising what the cathedral can offer to the community, and also to all who have supported the bid.”

Focus Consultants is based at Phoenix Business Park in Nottingham with offices in London, Leicester, Boston and Aubourn, near Lincoln.

For more information visit www.focus-consultants.co.uk

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Label printing project receives Food and Drink iNet support

The Food and Drink iNet has awarded a £10,000 grant to a Derbyshire labelling company to help the firm create a new labelling system for sandwich producers.

Positive ID Labelling Systems, based in Melbourne, near Derby, is developing a system which will allow small food retailers to easily add typical nutritional data and allergy information to labels on each product.

The company already sells a range of sandwich label printers and software to allow companies to personalise and print their own labels, but now it plans to also offer a system that will give small independent shops the ability to include the nutritional information of their products on labels.

The Food and Drink iNet, which is run by trade organisation The Food and Drink Forum and encourages and supports innovation in the East Midlands food and drink sector, has awarded the project £10,000 towards its £30,500 cost.

“This is an excellent example of an established company using innovation to develop and grow, while at the same time filling what it sees is a gap in the market in the food and drink sector and benefiting a good number of smaller manufacturers,” said Food and Drink iNet director Richard Worrall.

“The Food and Drink iNet is pleased to support this innovation at Positive ID Labelling Systems.”

Part-funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), the Food and Drink iNet aims to build on the tradition of innovation in the food and drink industry in the region by helping to create opportunities to develop knowledge and skills, and to help research, develop and implement new products, markets, services and processes.

It is managed by a consortium, led by the Food and Drink Forum and including Nottingham Trent University, the University of Lincoln, and the University of Nottingham. It is based at Southglade Food Park, Nottingham, with advisors covering the East Midlands region, who can offer a range of support to small and medium-sized enterprises that work in the sector.

Positive ID Labelling Systems, which was launched in 1987, sells price guns, date coding guns, labelling guns and sandwich labelling systems.

It currently employs 11 people at its headquarters in Castle Lane, Melbourne, and hopes the new product it is developing will create another job within the next 12 months.

Managing director John Mayers said: “The objective is to devise a computer-based reference that integrates with a spreadsheet to allow small businesses to accurately label nutritional and allergy data on their food and sandwich labels. This system will ensure correct ingredient, nutritional and allergy information is incorporated on food labelling. It will serve to protect consumers by providing accurate labels and protect firms from the potentially damaging consequences of mislabelling.

“We are very grateful for the support from the Food and Drink iNet, who have given us a grant towards our project.”

www.foodanddrink-inet.org.uk

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Craft cider maker hopes to expand after Food and Drink iNet grant

A Leicestershire craft cider maker is raising a glass to the Food and Drink iNet after being awarded a grant to help the company expand.

The Bottle Kicking Cider Company is being given almost £5,000 by the iNet to help the company raise its profile further afield and to introduce innovative new containers to store its drink.

The company, which is based at Hallaton, between Market Harborough and Uppingham, produces two bottled ciders and one draught cider, and supplies to local businesses, as well as Waitrose in the area.

But now it hopes to step up a gear, increase production and begin selling its drinks across the region and beyond.

“The hope is to grow the cider business and make it as successful as we can in the East Midlands, bearing in mind that the majority of production is in the West Country,” said Rob Morton, who runs the Bottle Kicking Cider Company.

The firm, which was launched two years ago, is match-funding the Food and Drink iNet grant.

Part-funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), the iNet co-ordinates innovation support for businesses, universities and individuals working in the food and drink sector in the East Midlands. It has developed an effective network to encourage the collaboration of academic expertise and knowledge, and local food and drink business innovation needs. The Bottle Kicking Cider Company aims to use the grant and its own investment to fund marketing expertise.

“We have got to the stage now where we have good presence locally and we need to get some support to help us expand the business and that’s where we are bringing in marketing expertise that can broaden our spread from the local Leicestershire area,” said Rob. “That will really help accelerate our growth plans.”

The second part of the support will help the Bottle Kicking Cider Company to buy specially adapted air-tight containers to store and transport the cider. The company currently rents containers, but buying the recycled, modified containers will be more cost-effective and more sustainable for the business.

The Bottle Kicking Cider Company, named after the famous traditional bottle-kicking gathering that takes place between the villagers of Hallaton and Medbourne every Easter Monday, produces up to 7,000 litres of cider a year using hand-picked apples from Gloucestershire and Leicestershire. It produces Scrambler and Rambler cider in bottles, and a still traditional farmhouse cider on draught.

Food and Drink iNet advisor Stevie Jackson said: “I’m very pleased that the Food and Drink iNet has been able to support the Bottle Kicking Cider Company with its plans for growth and hope that the innovations introduced will help the business to expand and develop.”

The Food and Drink iNet is managed by a consortium, led by The Food and Drink Forum and including Nottingham Trent University, the University of Lincoln, and the University of Nottingham. It is based at Southglade Food Park, Nottingham, with advisors covering the East Midlands region.

For more information about the iNet visit www.foodanddrink-inet.org.uk

Press release issued by Nottingham PR company Perfect 10 PR  www.perfect10pr.co.uk