Many of you know WAW member Alan Thompson for his work as a Business Adviser for Ad:Venture originally in Leeds and more recently in Wakefield. You may also be aware that he’s recently left Ad:Venture for a new adventure! 😊

Alan is now working in the Business Engagement Team for the Local Skills Improvement Plan (LSIP). This is an initiative run by the Dept for Education who’ve contracted Mid Yorkshire Chamber of Commerce in collaboration with West & North Yorkshire Chamber of Commerce to develop the LSIP.

In order to develop the plan they need to engage with as many employers as possible to understand the challenges and successes in recruiting employees with the right technical skills as well as upskilling existing staff.

They have a short questionnaire which will take 2 minutes to complete, the link is here: https://www.wnychamber.co.uk/local-skills-improvement-plan/

If you want to discuss this, Alan will be at the We Are Wakefield event at Wakefield Cathedral on Friday 3^rd March. Please say hello!

Good Fundraising Co. Ltd, based in Horbury, provides affordable and effective fundraising support to charities and not for profit clients throughout the UK. They are a friendly and approachable consultancy who can be flexible and responsive to their client’s needs, using their knowledge of fundraising in various fields.

The team have a have a proven track record in all forms of fundraising. Working closely with trustees, leadership teams, volunteers, and beneficiaries alike, they have worked with their clients to develop the right strategies and approach to ensure that goals are achieved. With successes ranging from securing the salary of a member of staff, the refurbishment of a community centre to a multi-million-pound capital build, no project is too big or too small.

“We’re delighted to join the We are Wakefield community; we attended the event in February and were warmly welcomed by everyone. It was great to see so many people coming together supporting each other to grow their businesses and as a company we wanted to be part of that and contribute what we can” Cath Longley, Owner and Lead Consultant, Good Fundraising Ltd.

 

Recent Beans are proud to announce the opening of their second speciality coffee roastery. A brand-new, customer facing coffee roastery in the heart of the district, in Wakefield city centre. After opening our doors in The Queen’s Mill, Castleford for the first time in December 2020, Recent Beans is proud to now be a key part of the local coffee culture, working with both customers and local businesses to improve the quality of coffee brewed in our area. During this time, we’ve created some fantastic partnerships, and friendships, with our regular customers and other local businesses, including a partnership with local Rugby League team, the Castleford Tigers, with the launch of ‘Tiger Blend’.

 

Recent Beans brand motto is that freshly roasted coffee is just better. We’ve never understood when the biggest selling coffees in supermarkets or big-chain coffee shops are coffees that have been stored for months, or years, on a shelf. Coffee tastes completely different in the first two weeks after it is roasted. Fresh coffee has flavour notes that will disappear if stored too long and the coffee extracts so much better fresh. Once you’ve tasted really fresh coffee, you never return to old beans.

 

We wanted to really showcase freshly roasted coffee so we decided we would do it the hard way, we would roast all our coffees daily, on small-batch speciality coffee roasters. Many roasters will roast beans once or twice a week in a large capacity roaster and send out from stock. While this is obviously better than supermarket beans, you can lose those amazing first few days after the roast, we won’t do that. Small batches roasted daily.

 

Recent Beans strays from the mould of other coffee roasters by operating out of working roasteries, open to the public, as both a retail stores and espresso bars. For too long, the magic of coffee roasting has been kept away, behind lock and key, with roasters going above and beyond to keep their secrets. The sights, sounds and smells of a working coffee roastery are magical and deserve to be enjoyed by all coffee lovers. We actively make our roasteries inviting and welcoming places to visit, with a retail store, espresso bar and demonstration areas.

 

We want all our customers to experience the fresh coffee revolution. Whether that be by visiting our roasteries and sampling coffee at our espresso bar, ordering through our website or visiting one of our hospitality partners in the district. We look forward to further ingraining ourselves into the local coffee culture with the opening of our new roastery on Westgate and are excited to welcome new regular customers & work alongside cafes and bars in the city.

 

Our new roastery will be officially opened on Friday 17th February at 10am by Councillor Denise Jeffery, in line with the Rhubarb Festival. To celebrate opening during the festival, we are launching an exclusive Kenyan Peaberry coffee, which has natural taste notes of Rhubarb with a deep chocolate body and fruity acidity. This coffee will only be available in our Wakefield roastery, while stocks last. We’ll also be serving a menu of rhubarb spiked coffees through our espresso bar. We look forward to welcoming everybody to our new roastery and are excited to add to the Recent Beans family.

Recent Beans

97-99 Westgate

Wakefield

WF1 1EL

[email protected]

01977 526972

We are proud to announce Quest Waste Management as We Are Wakefield Ambassadors.

Combining over 100 years’ experience, Quest Waste Management are specialists in the utilities industry. Boasting a diverse state of the art fleet, we provide tankers, sewer inspections, high-pressure jetting, drain unblocking and cleaning to commercial and domestic customers nationwide

We have a proven approach to offering a cost-effective solutions tailored to our customers’ requirements

Operating from a head office in Ossett, we have recently opened depots across the country to meet customer demand for our services.

Quest maintains the highest standards in quality, environment and health and safety management in accordance with national accreditations, enabling us to demonstrate our exceptional operational output without compromising safety or impact on the environment.

“As Quest continues to grow, collaboration with We Are Wakefield as an Ambassador will enable us to strengthen our position in the community, develop better supply chains and benefit the Wakefield Area.

Having won the Large Business Growth Success Award at the 2022 Wakefield Business Awards we are excited to be able to actively support the Wakefield Business District as we expand our customer base. Our relationships are built on confidence and fairness, delivered as a partnership.” Ivan Smyth, Quest’s Chief Executive.

Quest Waste Management, Trident House, Milner Way, Ossett WF5 9JE

Meet Caroline Wherritt, Founder & Chief Executive of Re:Work Office Furniture.

Re:Work are a new and used office furniture supplier who do things differently. As a social enterprise they have a wider focus on helping the environment, as well as providing great products and services to their customers.

“I’m a Wakefield born and bred business owner, running two companies, Re:Work Office Furniture and Workspace Furniture & Design, (although based in South Leeds) we cover everything from Interior design and planning for offices, to Supply and Installing the furniture, as well as supplying pre-loved office furniture. We have Yorkshires’ largest independent showroom, where people can come, feel, look and be inspired… we do the whole sch-bang!

I’m looking to support other businesses within the WAW network, through any useful contacts and experience I may have, as well as, hopefully, a friendly face!

For those that don’t know, I won the Christmas Jumper competition at the event in December – something I am both proud of, and completely embarrassed by because it really wasn’t all that special!!!”

Make sure you say hello to Caroline at the next We Are Wakefield event!

We are proud to announce RV2 Power Ltd as We Are Wakefield Ambassadors.

RV2 Power are the experts in the renewable energy sector.  They provide Solar PV design and installation, backup battery storage and nationwide EV charging installations as core services. All with the ability to support other green tech, such as Air Source Heat Pumps, Wind Turbines, Solar Farms and more. They offer full turn-key solutions across all electrical, solar PV and EV Charging sectors for both residential and commercial. Whatever your power requirements, RV2 can help.

Following on from their success at The Wakefield Business Awards, Tony Simmonds, Director of RV2 Power Ltd said, “RV2 are delighted to become Ambassadors for We Are Wakefield. Claire has created a group of local businesses who share our ethic for trying to keep services local and for doing great work for the people of Wakefield. The group is different from the traditional networking events that we have previously attended. This feels like a natural coming together of like-minded people from across all sectors, whether that be commercial, charitable, or cultural. Nothing is forced it just feels right, something we want to be a part of. We have no expectations of increasing our business, only that we build relationships within the district and hopefully help others along the way. We’re looking forward to see what we can achieve together. I hope we can contribute to assisting We Are Wakefield and the wider WAW community.”

RV2 Power, 5 Nano Park Kelly Way, Wakefield WF2 9FW

We are proud to announce Juice Personnel as We Are Wakefield Ambassadors.

Juice Personnel are an independent recruitment agency based in Wakefield. We were founded in 2003 in Huddersfield with the knowledge that things could be done differently. This led us to adopt what we called our ‘refreshingly different’ approach. This radical new approach to recruitment was based around our core values of mutual understanding, honesty, integrity and quality.

From day one we had a policy to constantly review how we worked. Because of this dedication to self-improvement and our refreshing, personal approach to recruitment we saw a client and candidate loyalty that we’ve never experienced before and quickly outgrew our small office.

Skip forward a few years and we still hold fast to the same morals we started with: mutual understanding, honesty, integrity and quality. Because of our unwavering dedication to client and candidate satisfaction Juice Personnel are now seen as one of the leading independent recruiters in Wakefield.

We are also working towards Net Zero in 2030.

Director, Kelly Smith:

“Juice Personnel has been part of the Wakefield Business Community since 2003 and has worked with 100’s of different types of businesses both from supplier and customer perspectives but since Claire Sutherley joined We are Wakefield, I personally don’t think there has ever been any kind of business community like it. Juice has benefitted from it’s membership in more than a number of ways; we’ve met new clients, new suppliers, won awards, sponsored events and more importantly, developed some genuine relationships with other local businesses which we know will flourish over time and create more and more opportunities.

Celebrating our 20^th birthday this year, I really want Juice Personnel to be an Ambassador for We are Wakefield. I want our business to support others, support our local business community whilst strengthening our position in the local market too. When true business relationships are built on trust, mutual respect and people having a genuine passion for helping others, than amazing things can and will happen and I knew as soon as I heard of the ambassador scheme, that I wanted Juice Personnel to be a part of it.

As a business, we are wholeheartedly looking forward to the next 12 months and what this WAW opportunity will lead to.”

Juice Personnel, Office 6 The Junction, Charles Street, Horbury, Wakefield WF4 5FH

We are proud to announce Solupak & Soluclean as We Are Wakefield Ambassadors.

Solupak are manufacturers and innovators in water soluble systems. Through local warehousing and distribution they maintain low carbon manufacturing in the UK. On-site blending of powders and in-house built sachet production machinery gives customers high speed output. They focus on ensuring that throughout all manufacturing, testing, formulation and packaging processes they maintain a small carbon footprint (using recyclable packaging and re-usable bottles), whilst producing a product which is cruelty free. The user has a low risk of chemical contact, minimal manual handling and easy to use cleaning products. Both the sachet and dilution colour is coded to BICSc. Because it is super concentrated, there is no added costs for shipping water around the country and very little space is required for storage.

The journey of soluCLEAN is one of many twists; 8 years ago the words ‘sustainability’ and ‘eco’ were treated with much less vigour and importance as they are now. soluCLEAN was the first single use plastic free cleaning brand In the commercial cleaning sector… the market place today compared to that of 8 years ago has progressed to having the environment at the forefront. The SoluCLEAN range is an eco-friendly and easy to use range of pre-dosed, concentrated surface cleaning products, encapsulated in fully water-soluble sachets. Covering virtually every aspect of the everyday cleaning needs for today’s demanding professional, saving money, time and waste without compromising on high standards of cleanliness and infection prevention.

“The past 12 months of membership for Solupak have provided us with endless opportunities to put us on the map, throughout Wakefield and beyond. As a company that supplies businesses all over the UK, as well as worldwide, we underestimated the positive impact working with our local business community could have. Becoming part of the ambassador’s club was an easy decision as the return on investment has already been proven but also extended our commitment to be active and engage to benefit not just ourselves but our fellow members. As a full team the value of continuing and further extending our involvement in WAW was agreed and look forward to attending the many superb events on offer.” Alex Thompson, Managing Director.

It’s a pleasure to announce our first We Are Wakefield Ambassador: Elis.

With more than a century of expertise, Elis is an international multi-service provider, offering textile, hygiene and facility service solutions. Everyday, we simplify our client’s life thanks to customised solutions that free up time, simplify processes and save money. We have one objective: to help our clients focus on the core of their business so they may better welcome their customers, assure the safety and well-being of their employees and ensure the quality of their products.

“Elis joined We Are Wakefield to establish a presence within the local community, building supportive and constructive business relationships.

Becoming a WAW Ambassador is a huge honour for Elis and we aim to use this role to further engage with local Wakefield businesses, adding positive value to the Wakefield community by driving collaboration and support to We Are Wakefield members.”

Jonathan Parkinson, General Manager

We’re pleased to welcome Castleford based Target Components Ltd as the latest We are Wakefield members.

Target Components and Target Servers Plus are IT distributors selling household makes along with their own branded products.

They sell to trade through the Target Components division but also sell B2B and end user via the Servers Plus division.

Target are celebrating their 25th year in 2023 and also completing their first year as an employee owned company.  What better way to celebrate than joining the largest business community in West Yorkshire?

Pictured are Finance Manager Rachael Jubb and Managing Director Michael Lawrence who will be coming along to the WAW events.  I’m sure they’ll be given the usual WAW welcome and enjoy being part of the ever growing family!