“The Food & Drink Forum helped Fresh Growers Ltd to achieve British Retail Consortium standards, to keep up-to-date and compliant with individual retailers’ standards, and supported us in our ethical audit,” said Fresh Growers Ltd managing director Martin Evans. “All of these things have helped us grow from a company that turned over £2.9 million in 1999 to one that turned over £13.8 million in 2006.

“If you want to develop your business, The Food & Drink Forum should be the first port of call for anyone working in the sector. It’s helped us build the knowledge within the business and also given us that external resource that, as a business, you cannot afford to have within the company all the time.”

Fresh Growers Ltd, which was launched in 1998 by nine sandland vegetable producers in north Nottinghamshire, and which opened a new processing, refrigeration and storage plant on a ten-acre site at Bilsthorpe in 2002, produces mainly carrots, potatoes and salad items.

“We have grown quite rapidly,” explains Martin Evans.

There are now ten members of the co-operative, farming more than 20,000 acres.

Briony Cross, innovation and technology manager at The Food & Drink Forum, says: “Accreditation to external quality systems is very important for developing businesses, and it’s something The Forum can help with. In some cases funding is available, depending on where a business is based, so sometimes that help is free.

“The expertise available at The Forum is wide, and we can help firms in the sector with all sorts of support, from internal auditing to ways of sourcing funding.”