20th Jul 2009 - 00:00
Abstract
An awards ceremony aimed at celebrating new and improved ways of working in the East Midlands food and drink sector is to be held for a second year, it has been announced.
The Food and Drink iNet Innovation Awards were successfully launched last year to recognise and reward the achievements of organisations and individuals in the region's food and drink industry. Now the Food and Drink iNet has revealed that it is staging the awards again this year, and the hunt is now beginning for worthy winners across Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire and Rutland. "Last year's entries reflected the exciting and innovative work that is going on in the food and drink sector in the East Midlands to create new products and new ways of working," said Richard Adlington, Food and Drink iNet interim project director. "The Food and Drink iNet is helping to encourage such innovation, and we want to build on the success of last year's inaugural awards by staging a similar event in 2009." Last year's Food and Drink iNet Innovation Champion was Rico Mexican Kitchen, founded by Marcela Flores Newburn. Marcela also won the Food and Drink innovation Network Campden BRI Award for Collaboration for the way in which she worked with Nottingham Trent University to resolve early shelf-life issues she had with the development of her authentic Mexican products. Marcela said: "Winning the Food and Drink iNet Innovation Champion 2008 award was a great honour and it gave me the confidence that what we were doing in launching and developing our business is along the right direction. It also opened doors for us to meet people who could support us further, including winning a support package from the Food and Drink Forum, and from Campden BRI. "There was also the benefit of having the awards PR, who did a press release on us as winners and gave us help with media contacts and coverage. The media has since been really important to raising the profile of our products and has helped us tell our story - it's so much easier to talk to them, because they know us as the Food and Drink iNet Innovation Champion for 2008." To register interest in receiving details of the award categories, contact Jo Stevenson on 0115 9758810 or enquiries@foodanddrinkforum.co.uk