Shropshire Food Enterprise Centre opens

Wednesday 30th June 2010, 3:10PM BST.

Chairman of Shropshire Council, Malcolm Pate, Sahar Hashemi, and Roger Phillips of Hereford Council, cutting the ribbon at Shropshire Food Enterprise Centre

Shropshire’s reputation as a centre for regional food and drink was officially put on the culinary map today with the opening of a new £7 million base for producers.

The Shropshire Food Enterprise Centre was launched at an interactive food and drink conference today with the ribbon cutting performed by Coffee Republic entrepreneur Sahar Hashemi.

The centre, managed by Heart of England Fine Foods, welcomed food and drink producers, manufacturers, retailers and business service providers to the event at the Battlefield Enterprise Park in Shrewsbury.

The centre is the first of its kind in the West Midlands, housing 12 purpose-built units for regional start-up and growing food and drink businesses, meeting, training and event facilities, and the Taste Kitchen, providing regionally-sourced food and drink and business opportunities for producers.

Sahar, who gave up her career as a London lawyer to launch Coffee Republic, said: “The centre solves every problem for entrepreneurs in the food and drink business.”

HEFF chief executive Karen Davies added: “We want to bring this centre to life. It’s a fantastic building but we intend to bring it to life through the support we give to tenants.”

The first tenants are The Flavoured Butter Company and Love Champagne.

1
Angela

July 1, 2010 at 16:22

Sorry, but only two tennants – isn’t this a big wehite elephant?!

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- Port Hill Boy
  
  July 2, 2010 at 11:59
  
  Dead right.
  This “food reputation” is just a set of small businesses blowing smoke in an effort to get publicity.
  Very few jobs are created that benefit ordinary people . My forecast is that in a year it will still be at least half empty.
  
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  - Mark Thompson
    
    July 5, 2010 at 12:06
    
    What a joke at our expense. Its been a white elphant from the start.
    Its been there empty for ages and now more money is being wasted by HEFF – scrap the lot and save us taxpayers some cash.
    
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2
Steve Christopher

July 5, 2010 at 18:46

£7 Million!!!!!!!!!

I have to agree with Mark Thompson about the total waste of money – Can anybody provide details of how many jobs this investment will provide at the expense of taxpayers? Would £7m not be better spent on Police or Nurses or just to care real social matters.

Heart of England fine foods eh? Is there a Champagne region here that I didn’t know about?

HEFF appear to just milk the system (excuse the pun re Milk – but maybe that’s local?)
I noticed with interest that HEFF also provide many local business with a lovely “A” Frame “shop here for taste of the heart of England” signs – I would love to discover if the addition of these signs to pavements and country roadsides actually make people stop and think WOW lets go here? or do they just block pavements and look terrible in the countryside?
Finally some of these lucky shops also have at massive discount or FREE (from tax payer) Large refrigerated display units – Made in Turkey/Poland/ Italy etc – thanks for spending locally HEFF

The sooner HEFF and Advantage West Mids are closed the better. But how much more will be wasted before that happens?

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