Yorkshire teens’ new cake design set to hit supermarket shelves
A new British cake designed by budding young food manufacturers from West Yorkshire is set to become part of the prestigious Mr Kipling range.
At an exciting event held with Britain’s largest food producer, Premier Foods on 1st March, twelve schools across South and West Yorkshire were tasked with setting up their own mini-manufacturing businesses and designing a new sweet treat to celebrate the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee.
Carleton Community High School in Pontefract was awarded the coveted winners trophy on the day, impressing the Dragons with their idea for ‘Jubilee Delight’, a traditional Battenberg cake emblazoned with a uniquely British Union Jack design. The Dragons praised the students’ well-designed packaging which included a Jubilee-themed game on the back.
Meanwhile, the team from Stocksbridge High School in Sheffield wowed the judges with the development of their ‘White Diamond’ luxury strawberry and cream cakes, packaged in regal purple and gold and designed to be eaten at street parties being held to celebrate the Jubilee.
The event is part of a series of themed challenges which The Manufacturing Institute is supporting through its ‘Make It’ campaign, which aims to attract the brightest and best new talent into manufacturing by promoting the sector as an exciting and rewarding career option for young people.
On the day, teams completed a series of tasks, each taking on job roles from managing director to operations managers through to finance, sales and marketing managers. Each team then developed a sales and marketing strategy and pitched their fully-costed ideas in a Dragons’ Den-style presentation to managers from Premier Foods.
As part of the challenge, the 13 and 14-year-old boys and girls were also tasked with creating an egg transportation system to allow the safe and easy movement of eggs around the Premier Foods manufacturing plant in Barnsley – the largest cake factory in Europe!
Nicola Crowther, Make It Campaign Manager, said:
“The Make It campaign aims to highlight manufacturing as a really exciting and challenging career option for young people. There are some terrific and varied opportunities available – not just on the technical side but in other areas such as marketing, sales and design which this challenge showcased perfectly. The event sparked some really creative ideas and it’s very exciting that the winning idea will be going into production as a result.”
Graham Paterson, Group Manufacturing Excellence Manager at Premier Foods, said:
“The team at Premier Foods has been enormously impressed with the enthusiasm, imagination and talent shown by the students. We were so inspired that we couldn’t help but put the winning idea into production. We’ve been very proud to be part of this challenge and I don’t think there’s any doubt that we’ve discovered some manufacturing stars of the future.”
Both schools will now go through to Make It’s Grand Regional Final to be held in summer 2012.
-ends-
Photos are available on request.
For further information please contact:
Rachel Handford, PR & Communications Manager
0161 875 2459
07837 387208
[email protected]
Notes to editors:
Participating schools were:
Carleton Community High School Pontefract
Carlton Community College Barnsley
Featherstone Technology College Wakefield
Holgate School Sports College Barnsley
Horbury School Wakefield
St Michael’s Catholic High School Barnsley
St Wilfrid’s Catholic High School and Sixth Form Pontefract
Stocksbridge High School Sheffield
Swinton Community School Mexborough
The King’s School Wakefield
Wath Comprehensive School Rotherham
Wakefield City Academy Wakefield
Make It
The Make It campaign, delivered by The Manufacturing Institute, is helping to attract the brightest and best new talent into manufacturing and promote the sector as an exciting and rewarding career option for young people.
Since 2006, over 30,000 young people and teachers have participated directly in hands-on manufacturing-focused Make It activities that are proven to improve their perceptions of careers in the sector.
www.makeit.org.uk
The Manufacturing Institute
The Manufacturing Institute is an independent charity founded to educate, inspire and improve manufacturing companies and their employees. We deliver a wide range of high quality education, training and consultative services. During the last decade we have helped over 9,000 manufacturers to improve their productivity and delivered improvements in performance in excess of £1.1bn.
www.manufacturinginstitute.co.uk
Premier Foods
As Britain’s largest food producer, Premier Foods is committed to being the ‘Best in British Food’ – delivering the taste the British love, with food that’s made in Britain by people who understand British consumers. We supply a range of retail, wholesale, foodservice and other customers with some of Britain’s best loved brands, including Ambrosia, Batchelors, Bisto, Hovis, Loyd Grossman, Mr. Kipling, Oxo and Sharwood’s . The company employs around 12,000 people operating from over 50 sites from Plymouth to Glasgow.
www.premierfoods.co.uk
