- repair the iconic Victorian casting hall and workshop where bells are created
- preserve and expand the foundry’s vast archive, which relate to over 10,000 bells and bell towers around the globe
- improve access to the site so anyone can visit and experience this unique place
- overhaul and improve the only bell museum in the country
- repair the tuning shop where the principles of the harmonic tuning of bells were developed in the 1890s
- reinstate the Foundry’s Carillon
- reengage with young people and learners to preserve the foundry’s unique craft skills.
Loughborough Town Deal to help save historic bell foundry with £835,000 funding
A project to save Taylor’s historic bell foundry has been given a significant boost by Loughborough Town Deal.
The Town Deal has confirmed funding to the tune of £835,000 to support the project to save the last major bell foundry in Britain.
It is one of 11 projects Loughborough Town Deal is backing after securing £16.9 million of Government funding. In total, the projects are worth over £40 million of investment for the town.
The Loughborough Bellfoundry Trust is restoring the historic Grade II* bell foundry in Freehold Street to save this iconic piece of the nation’s industrial heritage. Taylor’s bells can literally be heard ringing around the world.
The Town Deal Board is co-chaired by Cllr Jonathan Morgan, leader of Charnwood Borough Council, and Dr Nik Kotecha OBE, chairman of Loughborough-based Morningside Pharmaceuticals.
Cllr Morgan said: “I am delighted that we can now confirm Town Deal funding for this project. As the last major bell foundry in the UK, it is vital we do everything we can to save it, not just for the town of Loughborough but also our nation’s heritage.
“The bell foundry trust has done a wonderful job in securing a significant amount of funding from various sources, including the Town Deal, to save this iconic building.”
Dr Nik Kotecha said: “I am delighted the Town Deal is investing in the bell foundry. Not only is it important from a heritage point of view but also for the local tourism economy which supports jobs and growth.
“Taylor’s is a unique place and by making it more accessible we can attract more visitors to the area which supports other businesses. This is a great example of how the Town Deal benefits Loughborough and its communities now, and for many years to come.”
Bellfoundry Museum director, Dr Chrissie Van Mierlo, said: “The entire bellfoundry team would like to say a huge thank you to the Town Deal Board for their investment. Our mission to Save the Last Major Bellfoundry in Britain is a real passion project that’s been many years in the making. These vital funds have given our plans an enormous boost.
“We are incredibly proud of our town’s industrial past, so we are honoured and privileged to play a key role in its future. The people of Loughborough have blown us away with their enthusiasm for our site. We can’t wait to welcome them to the bellfoundry to see what it’s all about!”
The Loughborough Bellfoundry Trust has already secured £3.5 million of National Lottery support for its project which will:
Yü Group sees “very strong” revenue growth
Yü Group, the Nottingham-based supplier of gas, electricity and water to the UK SME and corporate business sector, has seen “very strong growth in revenue” in 2021, while profit is anticipated to pass expectations.
According to a trading update for the year ended 31 December 2021, full year revenues are to be in excess of £150m, an expected increase of 50% on FY20, which the company says is driven by continued organic growth and the integration of Ampower.
Meanwhile adjusted EBITDA and profit for the year are expected to be significantly ahead of market expectations.
Yü Group also reported record average monthly bookings of £13.8m for FY21, an increase of 66.3% on £8.3m for FY20.
Bobby Kalar, Group Chief Executive Officer, said: “I’m pleased to report a very strong performance for FY21, significantly ahead of market expectations. Acknowledging it’s been a tough year for the industry specifically, I’m proud the breadth of strength, experience and discipline in our business has again produced results that have surpassed expectations.
“FY21 revenues, profitability and forward contracted revenues have all extensively exceeded management forecasts. As well as a strong 2021, the forward visibility of our contract book for 2022 and beyond means the company’s accelerating growth is underpinned and the board are confident in the continued financial progress of the business.
“The strong sales momentum of H1 has continued to accelerate in H2 with record monthly bookings. The group experienced a 66% increase in monthly bookings compared to the £8.3m achieved in 2020. I’m particularly pleased how the business responded to Q4 market volatility which resulted in record quarterly bookings and onboarding performance.
“Contracted meter points have increased 83% while customer contract lengths are trending at an average of 30 months. The group has entered 2022 with excellent forward revenue visibility supported by a solid forward and hedged order book. Alongside driving growth, management have focussed relentlessly on improving margin through an appropriate hedging policy. The group performance incentivisation structures have been embedded in management culture and I’m pleased to see this reflected in the performance of the business.
“The board’s growth objective for 2021 was very clear and well documented. Having positioned the business for significant and profitable growth these goals have been delivered. 2022 is set to enable the group to continue to scale rapidly and benefit from the associated economies of scale. I’m particularly pleased the business has achieved this objective despite a period of high market volatility.
“I would like to thank all my team members for playing such a vital part in delivering and exceeding our objectives.”
2021 sees “strong” trading for Forterra
Forterra, the Northampton-headquartered producer of manufactured masonry products, witnessed strong trading throughout 2021.
According to a trading update for the year ended 31 December 2021, full year brick sales volumes were 33% ahead of 2020 and 1% ahead of 2019.
Meanwhile full year revenue is expected to total approximately £370m, a 27% increase on 2020 (£291.9m) and a 3% reduction relative to 2019 (£380.0m).
Stephen Harrison, Chief Executive of Forterra plc, said: “The strong customer demand seen through 2021 continued up to the end of the year, with 2022 trading continuing where 2021 ended. Having successfully delivered sizeable price increases across our product ranges we are confident of delivering meaningful growth in 2022. We remain watchful of further inflationary cost pressures, and we will apply further price increases as necessary.
“The continued strength of demand for our products bodes well, with customers already keen to secure supply ahead of the commissioning of our new brick factory at Desford later this year. We expect 2022 will be an important year as we prepare for a step change in output and financial performance from early 2023.”
Marketing Derby pledges five-figure sum to City of Culture 2025 bid
Marketing Derby has given the city’s bid to become UK City of Culture 2025 a major boost after pledging £20,000 of support.
Derby is one of eight long-listed locations for such status – and next week the city will be submitting its formal bid. In the meantime, the team behind the bid has been working hard to generate support.
Marketing Derby’s pledge, which will be spread over four years, is a mixture of financial and in-kind support.
John Forkin, Managing Director of Marketing Derby, said: “Marketing Derby is fully behind the bid to become City of Culture in 2025.
“We are delighted to make this pledge to help build the business support for the application for what we believe will be the best bid submitted.
“We’re confident that culture will become increasingly important for our economy and offer and will play a key role in the post-pandemic recovery.”
The UK City of Culture competition uses culture as a catalyst for levelling up areas outside London and putting new parts of the UK on the cultural map internationally.
Bidding for the title in its own right has been shown to have a hugely positive impact on a place, using the bidding process to bring together lasting local, national and international partners, to share a vision for their area and attract investment.
A measure of the support Derby’s bid has from the city was shown at a conference organised by Visit Derby, part of Derby City Council, which was held earlier this month at Derby Museums’ Museum of Making.
Around 130 people attended the hybrid event called Culture Derby – Transforming the City Through Culture and the Visitor Economy.
It featured contributions from Mo Suleman, of Derby, Marketing Derby’s marketing and communications manager Andrew Lowe, Councillor Ross McCristal, the city council’s cabinet member for leisure, culture, tourism and wellbeing and Adam Buss, director Culture Derby, who is leading the city’s bid.
Following the presentation, delegates were asked to complete a ‘Pledge Card’, to get behind the bid.
The pledges are made based on the bid being successful – and so far, businesses and organisations have pledged tens of thousands of pounds worth of support.
Derby’s formal bid will be submitted on Wednesday, February 2 – and while it waits to see if it has been successful, supporters are being urged to keep the bid visible to judges through social media by following Culture Derby on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook and using the hashtag #CultureDerby2025.
Companies and organisations can also continue to pledge their support after the city submits its formal bid.
2022 Business Predictions: Ben Solomon, MD at Octavian IT
It’s that time of year, when Business Link Magazine invites the region’s business leaders to offer up their predictions for the year ahead.
It has become something of a tradition, given that we’ve been doing this now for over 30 years.
Here we speak to Ben Solomon, MD at Octavian IT.
The challenges in 2022 continue to be related to secure, productive and effective remote working and cyber security. The cyber security landscape is constantly becoming a more dangerous place and it’s more important than ever for businesses to have even just a basic layer of security protections in place.
Related to remote working, we’re still seeing a large amount of the UK’s business and residential networking infrastructure is not up-to-par. There are still so many locations that cannot get stable and necessary speed fibre connectivity. This causes IT partners such as ourselves a large headache as we work with businesses to work as effectively as possible from outside of the office or with cloud services.
Recruitment is also a challenge, there does seem to be a shortage of experienced engineers with the right culture/mentality.
Opportunities though are plentiful – the cloud and cloud services are in a very exciting era – MSPs like OIT have the great responsibility of helping businesses select the best cloud technology for them and there are now a lot. It’s key to select software and services that will correctly compliment your business and not actually hinder it. Cyber Security is a huge area that still requires expertise and experience in order to provide quality consultancy to businesses. If businesses can find their own ways to provide a service or product that helps keep their clients safe, this will be a huge market for SMBs.
2022 Business Predictions: Kris Randall, Olano
It’s that time of year, when Business Link Magazine invites the region’s business leaders to offer up their predictions for the year ahead.
It has become something of a tradition, given that we’ve been doing this now for over 30 years.
Here we speak to Kris Randall from leadership, digital learning and development consultancy Olano, which is part of Nicholas Associates Group, a high growth company offering apprentice to boardroom talent management solutions for SMEs through to international corporates.
Following a surge in digitalisation due to the pandemic, people’s concentration has dropped dramatically. In 2000 the average attention span of a human was 12 seconds but, this has now reduced to just 8 seconds.
This is likely to only shorten therefore, so will how people learn. Many companies have already moved to some form of online learning with Training Magazine finding that 88% of large companies use virtual training alongside other tools.
However, moving online does not guarantee information retention. With digitalisation increasing within companies, it is likely there will be a large transition over to video and animation, making text on the screen solely a support tool.
Covideo found that viewers retain 95% of a video’s message compared to only 10% if reading it in text. The demand for information to be condensed in a visual sense is in high demand.
Businesses rely on employees retaining information to develop and ensure they carry out their job role correctly.
With 65% of businesses currently finding that their platforms are not fit for modern workplaces, the move to adjust this is imminent. Video is short and informative and therefore with lower concentration levels video will be a necessity rather than a choice this year.
Our final prediction for 2022 is that there will be a sudden increase in animation providing a more reflective style of learning that has shown to be beneficial in the workplace.
Nottingham high street retail site sold for £21.65m
Knight Frank has sold a 1.4-acre retail site in Nottingham city centre for £21.65 million on behalf of Abrdn to the international business of Federated Hermes.
The property, 4-13 Long Row & 17-25 Upper Parliament Street, provides 85,387 sq ft of accommodation arranged as a large format store and five high street retail units.
Whilst predominantly let to Primark Stores Ltd until 2060, other occupiers include Tesco Stores Ltd, Greggs PLC and Tui UK Retail Ltd.
Situated within the central retail core of Nottingham, the freehold property features extensive frontage onto both Long Row and Upper Parliament Street. The Primark store benefits from being located directly opposite The Exchange Shopping Centre.
Jackson Criss acted on behalf of Federated Hermes. Knight Frank acted on behalf of Abrdn.
Hockley’s former National Video Game Arcade transformed into 100-cover Vietnamese restaurant
Pho, a 100-cover Vietnamese restaurant, is finalising an extensive fit out and is set to open soon in Hockley (on 31 January).
Creating 30 new jobs, the 4,000 sq ft restaurant has undergone a back to brick restoration. The Pho team has transformed the ground floor of the former National Video Game Arcade building in Hockley into a vibrant, Vietnam-inspired space to meet, eat and sample a range of soups, sides and specials.
Pho founder, Stephen Wall, says: “I know the city well and we’ve been working with Box Property to try and find the right site for years. We saw this site a few years ago and were keen, so to finally get the opportunity to open here feels like fate and a long time in the making.
“We absolutely love the site and pitch. We’ve built it from scratch, with the walls, columns and other existing features at the centre of the design. It’s a wonderful building to open a restaurant in as the space almost designs itself.”
It is the latest opening for the family run business which was established in 2005 and now has more than 30 locations nationwide from Covent Garden to Edinburgh. It was let to Pho by Box Property following a four-year search to find the ideal location.
Ben Tebbutt, co-founder and director of Box Property, adds: “We’ve worked closely with the Pho team to find a suitable site in Nottingham for several years. They started their search in Hockley initially, then came close to taking a lease in the King Street/Queen Street area but that didn’t feel quite right.
“We’ve championed Hockley for a long time and it was always the preferred option. Owner Stephen Wall felt that Hockley was the only location for them.
“It was a complicated deal to put together, with lots of landlords works and a listed building in the mix, but what the team has done to transform it is fantastic. It’s another asset to Hockley and we can’t wait to get stuck into a steaming bowl of soup.”
Move to brand new warehousing and office facility marks new chapter for Troubador Publishing
Troubador Publishing have moved into a brand new warehousing and office facility near Market Harborough, on the border of Northamptonshire.
The move expands the company’s warehousing and distribution facilities and houses all staff in a purpose-built office environment that includes dedicated meeting spaces.
The £400,000 investment positions the company for growth in the author services market and will enable it to broaden its book distribution operation to other publishers.
In parallel moves, the company has improved its book distribution capabilities for its authors and publisher partners through a special arrangement with wholesaler Gardners
Books, investment in the Nielsen PubEasy book buying system for retailers, and by offering sales representation from its own warehouse through Star Book Sales.
Troubador’s purpose-built office space includes not only fully-equipped meeting rooms, but a large meeting space used to host events, and a bookshop where titles from the company’s Matador, Book Guild and Troubador imprints will be sold direct.
Managing Director, Jeremy Thompson, said: “This marks a significant step up for the company as we have changed the way in which we distribute our titles to the retail trade for the better, with new arrangements that are faster, cheaper and more robust than when previously using a third-party distribution company. By investing heavily in new systems and processes, we can not only offer our authors and retail customers a better service, but we reduce our environmental impact by minimising road miles for our books.”
The company acquired new premises in June last year, and have spent the last six months of 2021 amalgamating stocks from three warehouses into a single warehouse.
In addition, a new environmentally-friendly office building has been built from scratch, featuring solar panels, automatic lights and super-insulation. The moving process was completed in December last year.
Operations director, Jane Rowland, said: “We have been aiming for some time to strengthen our book distribution capabilities, as we knew that our distribution could be done more efficiently and at a lesser cost (financially and environmentally) if we managed this ourselves. This has meant significant investment in both back office systems to supply
P&A data daily to retailers, and warehouse infrastructure to manage the distribution process. Both are paying off as we are seeing increased sales of titles across our imprints already.”
200 students get hands-on taste of manufacturing and engineering careers in Derbyshire
An impact report has revealed that nearly 200 students from North East Derbyshire’s schools got a hands-on taste of manufacturing and engineering careers during the Made in Chesterfield festival in November last year.
Businesses, teachers and pupils have praised the Made in Chesterfield initiative.
In a review of the month-long annual festival undertaken by Direct Education Business Partnership (DEBP), which coordinated Made in Chesterfield in conjunction with Destination Chesterfield, it also found that there was no demand for virtual school visits, indicating that schools are keen to re-engage face-to-face with the business community despite the pandemic.
Ivan Fomin, Managing Director of MSE Hiller and Destination Chesterfield’s board member responsible for manufacturing and engineering in the borough, said: “The uptake of the physical workplace tours by schools for Made in Chesterfield was very encouraging given the current climate of uncertainty. There is a very real appetite amongst schools to give young people the widest exposure to careers and job opportunities.”
He added: “It is so important that we highlight the local career and job opportunities to young people as they are an intrinsic part of Chesterfield’s growth ambitions.”
Virtual workplace tours were launched last year amidst the pandemic, however with Covid restrictions eased physical workplace tours were reintroduced for 2021.
Pupils from Whittington Green School, Springwell Community College, St Mary’s Catholic High School, The Bolsover School, Shirebrook Academy and Heritage Academy all took part in visits to local engineering and manufacturing businesses, including Aztec Oils, Woodhead Construction, CBE+, Penny Hydraulics, Superior Wellness, Morgan Sindall, Weightron Bilanciai, MSE Hiller and United Cast Bar.
Carol Claydon, head of HR at Superior Wellness which hosted students from Springwell Community College, said: “The tour organised by Made in Chesterfield was a fantastic opportunity for our business. Our team members thoroughly enjoyed explaining more about the business, their roles and their work experience to the students. It was brilliant to see how inspired the students were and I think it opened their eyes to the various career opportunities within the local area.
“The campaign is a fantastic way to inspire the next generation and hopefully showcase the different sectors and opportunities available within the town of Chesterfield.”
Ben Jones, project manager at Weightron Bilanciai which hosted students from Bolsover School, added: “Hopefully we have inspired young people to be interested in what they want to do as a career so they can start thinking ahead now to what they should be studying and also whether they want to go to university or follow the apprenticeship route.”
Charlie Goodwin, projects officer at DEBP who compiled the report, said: “We are so grateful to the many businesses who got involved with Made in Chesterfield and worked with us to make it a success in 2021. We appreciate that everyone continues to experience challenging times, however the feedback from those who participated has demonstrated the value in providing meaningful insights into the working world and the role this initiative has in inspiring future employees.”
Launched originally in 2013, the annual Made in Chesterfield campaign has since introduced thousands of young people across North East Derbyshire to the possibility of a career in the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) sector.
The hands-on campaign aims to bridge the careers information gap between education and industry by giving schools and pupils access to workplace tours, a range of careers videos and the MyFuture virtual careers fair.
Made in Chesterfield 2021 was made possible thanks to funding and support from The Chesterfield College Group, Chesterfield Borough Council, D2N2 LEP and Careers and Enterprise Company, North Derbyshire Career Hub, MSE Hiller, United Cast Bar Ltd and NatWest.
Emily Carter, operational careers hub lead at D2N2 Local Enterprise Partnership, added: “We are ever grateful to our cornerstone employers and local business partners for supporting opportunities such as the Made in Chesterfield open doors programmes, supporting young people’s career awareness and aspirations, again this year despite the challenges still faced by industry.
“D2N2 Careers Hub is excited to fund the expansion of this successful model to bring more open doors programmes to young people across the wider D2N2 region during the rest of the 2021-22 academic year.”
Julie Richards, principal and Chief Executive of the Chesterfield College Group, said: “I am delighted to hear that once again the Made in Chesterfield initiative has been a great success. We are proud to support the programme of activities which take place to connect the future workforce with local employers.
“It is very encouraging to hear how so many schools and employers benefited. It is critical we excite and educate the next generation to understand the fantastic career opportunities for engineering and manufacturing in Chesterfield to build the workforce for the future and secure local economic growth.”
