Industry Sectors

Southwell is our home, and has been from the very start. For over 50 years we’ve been kneading, beating and mixing, and our range has grown into a wide and varied selection of traditional and continental breads, hand finished confectionary and irresistible cream cakes.

Our dedicated team sell, produce, pack and deliver the 80,000 retail items we sell every day, six days a week. We also keep our ovens fired up 24 hours a day to ensure only the freshest quality baked goods are delivered to our customers.

You'll find our range on the shelves of stores from Liverpool to Grimsby, Sheffield to Peterborough, and in over 230 co-op food stores throughout Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire.

Still a privately owned company, over the years we’ve continued to grow, invest and succeed. We’re as focused as ever on our fresh potato business, while continuing to build on the success of our innovative prepared vegetable ranges. From our sites in Lincoln, Scotland and the South West, we supply retail, wholesale and food manufacturing customers with fresh and ready prepared potatoes

Our Main Board members have a wealth of experience – from farming right through to retail – and they continue to set the strategic direction for the business. They’re supported by the Executive Board, whose diverse range of expertise helps them to take that direction and work out how to turn the plans into reality. And the whole thing is underpinned by the 700-strong team of people who keep everything moving – day in and day out.

Whether running our factories and offices or looking after our growers and customers we’re all passionate about what we do and about how we do it. From maintaining our stringent Environmental Policy to ensuring that we provide safe and ethical working conditions for everyone in our supply chain through the UK Modern Slavery Act, everything we do is guided by a shared vision of ‘How we do business’. Supported by our values, this is what drives our actions every day. 

The relationship we have with every single one of our suppliers is incredibly important to us and we pride ourselves on our ability to develop partnerships based on mutual trust. It’s an extremely important part of our approach to business.

We work with all sorts of suppliers: specialist niche growers supplying very small quantities, family farms, large farming businesses supplying huge tonnages, growers supplying in tight seasonal windows and overseas suppliers filling the gaps that our home crop cannot fill.

Designed, built and tested in Woodhall Spa, Lincolnshire, our range of self-propelled machines uses ground-breaking technology to deliver a specification not often found on other machines available in the crop spraying market.

Furthermore, all Househam self-propelled machines have been designed with low weight and even weight distribution in mind. This minimises soil compaction and allows the machine to be used throughout the year, minimising weather delays and reducing the risk of diseases taking hold.

Househam is dedicated to producing leading edge technology which is designed to offer maximum efficiency and ' future-proof' our ever expanding range of sprayers. Customers are supported around the globe with an experienced network of service engineers and dealers', ensuring help and assistance is but a phone call away. Providing world class technical innovation, research and development and testing and manufacturing services to deliver exciting, effective and efficient concepts for our global customers.

With over four decades of success within the agricultural sprayer market, Househam is able to combine cutting edge technology devised by some of the industry's best engineers with precision manufacturing and speed to market.

The Vision of Househam

The challenges faced by agriculture are massive. The ever increasing world population relies on the food agriculture produces and this represents a challenge for the industry, globally, unlike any other industry has hitherto faced.

However, bringing more and more land into agricultural use can have detrimental effects of the environment by encouraging deforestation, which releases more CO2 into the atmosphere, and the draining of natural wetlands both of which increase the risk of flooding.

By protecting and improving the vast areas of soil currently under cultivation and maximising its productive capacity with advances in plant breeding, nutrient management, crop protection products and innovative application technology, we should be able to go a long way towards producing higher volumes of food which is healthier, safer and produced in a more environmentally friendly and sustainable manner.

Our aim is to use new and innovative technology to enable us, as leading manufacturers of crop sprayers, to produce machines which enable growers not only to apply crop protection products very accurately, but also to help protect soil structure by reducing soil compaction. Our links with the leading agricultural research bodies and our continuing dialogue with practical farmers and contractors helps us to produce leading edge crop sprayers which meet the needs of users around the world. 

Uncle Henry’s is a farm shop, butchery and cafe located next to the village of Grayingham. It is part of a family arable and pig farming business and is managed by Emma Blandford, daughter of owners Steve and Meryl Ward. We major on great taste and sourcing local. Our shop and butchery offer the full range and we are proud to support over 45 Lincolnshire producers; our local food heroes! We see ourselves as a hub of local food and an outlet for local food businesses to showcase their product. 
We produce and make many of the products that we sell ourselves and we’re always developing new lines to add to our range. All of our pork is home reared and we buy in beef, lamb & poultry locally and butcher it ourselves. Our butchery team cure our own bacon and ham and produce many added value cuts and products including our BBC One Show Award Winning Lincolnshire Sausage. We have been working with the Lincolnshire CO-OP for over a year now, initially wholesaling our cooked ham and pork into their stores under the Uncle Henry’s brand and this year expanding our range to include Caramelised Onion Sausages, Lincolnshire Sausagesand our home-cured Traditional Short Back Bacon. 

All of our efforts would not be possible without our dedicated team who are local people themselves and are essential to our business success. 
We recruit people who are passionate about food and our business. Over the years, we have established managers of the three core budget departments; shop, café and butchery. 
The staffing that is below management level is based around setting up full and part-time positions. These give member of the team hours that they are comfortable working and benefit the business through acquiring a flexible workforce that can respond to periods of high customer demand.  Our young weekend team are a valuable part of the business and are expected to take a high degree of responsibility whilst benefiting by building up key life skills.

We invest in their training and development and make Uncle Henry’s an enjoyable place to work. Training requirements are tailored to the individual at management level and our front of house team have an on-going customer service development training programme. 
Aside from staff training around our customer care requirements, we hold a team brief each morning to discuss any previous challenges and what’s happening throughout the day ahead. We are continually building staff product knowledge and are helped by suppliers coming into store for samplings. 
We also have our own monthly mystery shopper which is an invaluable tool for continuous training and development and provides a great opportunity to reward good service.

Our plan for this year, in order to grow our business further, is to focus on continuing to attract both new and also our regular loyal customers but also to promote the great value of our fantastic food offer to our customers. We are continuing to grow our image as a destination for all age groups and working with key partners such as Visit Lincoln over the past year is a key element in our strategic planning process as we continually work on achieving this.

Frontier Agricutlures head office is based in Witham St Hughs, south west of Lincoln.

Frontier’s values are integrity, customer focus and expertise. This means choosing to do the right thing for customers, colleagues and ourselves and collaborating to put the customer at the heart of everything we do.

Frontier people use their skills, training and expertise for the benefit of customers. Frontier encourages, supports and rewards colleagues who consistently demonstrate its values when dealing with each other and customers. The company operates a reward and recognition scheme built around celebrating colleagues who demonstrate exceptional performance as measured against the company values.

Frontier is primarily an organisation built on providing advice and services to customers. This would not be possible without attracting, retaining and developing the most talented people. Frontier expects and supports all colleagues to be the very best that they can. In pursuit of this the company invests heavily in learning and development programmes delivered both in-house and by industry recognised bodies. These cover a wide range of vocational and non-vocational areas including:

• Job specific training – all technical advisors are supported in gaining relevant industry qualifications including FACTS and BASIS.
• More Frontier agronomists hold the highly prestigious BASIS Diploma than at any other business
• Health and safety training
• Driver training – all fleet, delivery and company car drivers are regularly assessed by driver trainers, with fleet drivers required to complete recognised annual training.
• Executive Development Programme - bespoke development opportunities for senior managers, to support career progression and harness their contribution to delivering the business’ strategy
• Leadership Development Programme –Developing managers to better lead, coach and empower their own teams
• Personal skill development – Frontier offers a rolling calendar of general learning opportunities open to all colleagues. As well as training in the use of software such as Microsoft Office applications, these include other courses aimed at improving people’s personal skill set such as ‘speaking with confidence’, ‘overcoming difficult situations’ and ‘getting things done’.

Frontier provides all colleagues with regular performance and development reviews. This is an opportunity for people to identify and agree potential areas for future development with their manager.

Frontier is the largest crop production and grain marketing company in the UK, formed in 2005 as a joint venture between Associated British Foods and Cargill plc. We employ 1,000 people and turn over £1.5 billion. Our vision is to be the first choice partner for crop production and grain marketing, and the first choice employer in UK agriculture.

Our business approach is underpinned by our values of ICE – integrity, customer focus and expertise – which drive our behaviour and are key to our success.Our ambition is to grow our business and we intend to do it responsibly, doing things properly because it’s the right thing to do.

We will use our expertise, our scale and our leadership position to make a difference to others. Some companies call this sustainability. At Frontier, we call it the responsible choice.

The Water Management Alliance

The Water Management Alliance (WMA) is a group of like-minded Internal Drainage Boards (known as IDBs) operating in the Anglian Region. We are building resource and capacity in the Anglian region in order to meet the challenges of climate change, sustainable water and flood risk management.  The WMA works closely with our IDB’s, partners, communities and individuals to secure new funding streams and deliver innovative approaches at a local level.  

We welcome partnership approaches and aim to deliver value for money projects using local expertise and experience.  

Did you know Internal Drainage Boards…?

• date back some 900 years and are one of Europe’s oldest water management organisations.
  
• have statutory powers to undertake flood defence and water management works. 
  
• aim to manage water levels and flood risk management for people and wildlife sustainably and aim to limit impacts of flood and drought within their drainage districts.  
  
• are collectively one of the biggest managers of freshwaters and wetlands in the UK.  
  
• manage drainage districts that cover 10% of the land in England and Wales.
  
• manage and maintain over 500 pumping stations, 22,000 km of watercourse and numerous sluices and weirs for people and wildlife.  
  

The Water Management Alliance works for and on behalf of other Flood Risk Management Authorities as well as community groups, NGO’s and landowners.  We also deliver significant flood risk management benefits and enhanced environmental outcomes on the ground.  Our members are all independent and democratically accountable statutory bodies who seek to protect some 548,000 hectares in East Anglia. 

The WMA Eastern Drainage Boards include the Broads IDB, East Suffolk IDB and the Norfolk Rivers IDB.  

South Holland:

This  includes some of the most fertile arable land in the world and is widely recognised as the bread basket of Britain. The area is home to around 60,000 people, a thriving local economy and an increasingly popular tourist destination that attracts visitors from around the country. The area is both locally and nationally important and worth the cost of defending and protecting, now and in future.

Although the entire area is at considerable theoretical risk of river flooding and inundation from the sea, the actual risk is substantially reduced by the work that we do in partnership with Local Authorities, the Environment Agency and Natural England.

The area's full watershed catchment area draining to the Drainage District is the same as the Drainage District, which means that we can provide a better service than we might otherwise be able to: this is because we are not compelled to take surface water from outside the Drainage District that we have no control over. This gives us an advantage in being able to protect the people of South Holland and reduce the risk of flooding.

If you choose to work for the WMA or any of its Member Boards you will be joining an organisation which is striving to provide employees with a positive employment experience. Whether you work for us as a digger driver or as a member of the senior management team, there will be a considerable variety of challenges in your diverse workload and you will be offered real opportunities for career development.

To find out more about the WMA follow them on @The_WMA  

Our people are approachable and trustworthy - true specialists, for whom reputation, relationships, innovation and service is balanced with intelligence, knowledge, professionalism and a thoughtful approach to work.

Graduate Programme

Strutt & Parker’s residential, rural, development and planning teams will continue to operate under the Strutt & Parker brand, whilst the commercial arm of the business will operate under the BNP Paribas Real Estate brand.

Every year we hand-pick a number of Graduates who we believe have the ambition and talent to play a key part in the future of our expanding business.

Respect

As a partnership we have a culture of respect for each other’s knowledge and expertise. We educate, train and nurture our people, and actively engage in social programmes.

Trust

One of our core values is based on the trust placed in us by our clients and by our colleagues. We actively seek to avoid conflicts of interest. Over the changing landscape of the past 125 years, we have grown and developed into new disciplines.

True Partnership

The partnership between ourselves, our staff and our clients has always been at the heart of what we do. An encapsulation of our beliefs, it informs how we conduct ourselves as a business and as individuals. 

Delivery

We ensure we deliver our services diligently, creatively and intelligently, with an absolute focus on our clients. We like to celebrate our past successes, whilst keeping our focus on the future.

Professional

We apply the highest standards of expertise to all our activities to achieve the best results. Our working environments are fun and friendly, while also professional and hardworking. 

Involvement

Ours is a collaborative environment which encourages ideas, innovation and discussion. Supported through the opportunities of progression and personal development, our people tend to stay with us for many years.

The NCFM is dedicated to helping food industry employees advance their careers. We understand the demands of studying while working in this fast moving, dynamic industry and balancing family commitments. Our part-time Degree Apprenticeships provide one of many flexible study options for those working in Quality, Technical roles and Operations Management.

The NCFM is also committed to helping the sector innovate. We work with employers and partners towards this goal, aided by our partnership with leading equipment suppliers and our outstanding specialist facilities, food factory and cutting-edge automation.

NCFM offer a range of opportunities for business and employees. These cover opportunities for studying apprenticeships and degree apprenticeships, research and innovation.

Founded in 2006, Ripe Now Ltd. is a company based within the Fresh Produce sector. We import tropical fruit (such as mango, pomegranate and kiwi) from across the globe and ripen them in-house to our customer's specification. Our customers also ask us to pack their own, known as 3rd party packing. These products include anything from bananas and pineapples to sweet potato and butternut squash.

We employ just over 100 people, the vast majority being based within our Production department. Other areas of the business include Commercial, Procurement, Finance, Warehouse, Technical, Human Resources and Quality – we like to think of ourselves as a family!

As a small company we value people as individuals and offer a friendly, flexible and engagement working environment. We are experts within our field – something that is acknowledged by our customers, suppliers and competitors. We are also focused on helping the communities within our supply base and ensuring that our supply chain is ethical and socially responsible.

The fresh produce industry is forever evolving based on consumer needs, supply availability and new product development. The industry is challenging at the moment, however the constant change makes it an exciting place to be – there is no time to be bored!