Event details
Innovation and competitiveness in the Food and Drink sector
| Time: | 5:30pm for a 6:00pm start |
| Date: | Thursday 12 November 2009 |
| Venue: | No 1 Nottingham Science Park, Jesse Boot Avenue, off University Boulevard, Nottingham |
Peverel Manners, Managing Director, Belvoir Fruit Farms Limited
When Belvoir Fruit Farms began there was no UK adult soft drink market to speak of but since then it has been one of the market’s pioneers. By developing their Cordials and sparkling Pressés, and lately their ‘Good Stuff’ range, they have been consistently innovative, both in product and process terms. They do not compromise on quality and are proud to produce healthy and wonderful tasting soft drinks for premium customers and their families made from unique recipes and using genuine and natural raw materials.
Peverel’s father began the business in 1984 when he needed to use up the left-over and over-ripe fruit from his PYO farm. He hit on the idea of pure fruit cordials and began by making his wife’s elderflower cordial. Joining as head salesman in 1992, Peverel has been in charge since 1997 following his mother’s death and his father’s retirement.
Joe Schneider, Director, Stichelton Dairy
Stilton is protected under European law as to where and how it can be made, which prevents it being produced traditionally as a farmhouse cheese made with raw milk. It wasn’t always thus, and in 1989 British consumers tasted the last raw milk Stilton. After a nearly 20 year absence, Randolph Hodgson of Neals Yard Dairy teamed up with Joe Schneider to restore the long forgotten cheese.
Setting up a small-scale dairy in 2006 on a Nottinghamshire farm they now produce the finest quality raw milk cheese from the organic milk of a single herd. Their cheese is recognisable in size, shape, and flavour but called Stichelton, a raw milk cheese that offers a complexity and length of flavour of a different sort to that of pasteurised cheese. They have poured traditional knowledge and passion for authentic cheesemaking into Stichelton with the goal to bring back a long forgotten cheese so that British consumers could enjoy one of Britain’s best known and best loved cheeses in its original form.