Sweet success as Tomlow Honey expands
A Warwickshire farm has secured funding to help transform a former milking shed into a honey processing facility. Tomlow Honey has been awarded a grant worth £17,000 to support the renovation of the building from the Rural Enterprise Grant (REG) programme.
Tomlow Honey, based at Thirn Furlong Farm in Stockton, was set up by amateur beekeeper David Stott in 2001.
The farm has grown to produce its current supply of 16,000 lbs of honey each year, and Stott has received funding from the REG programme to enable him to take the company to the next level.
The £17,000 funding was awarded to support building work and installation of equipment which will enable him to speed up the honey extraction process four-fold.
David Stott, owner of Tomlow Honey, said: “I’d been a keen amateur beekeeper and honey maker but as time went on it became more and more of a full time occupation.
“Eventually I started to work full time and since then the business has just grown and grown up to the point where I was having to turn down requests for stock.
“This new facility, supported by the Rural Enterprise Grant, has helped make a step change in capacity, more than doubling the amount of honey we can produce.
“The REG funding has helped move this along much faster than we would otherwise have been able to and will really make a difference to what we can achieve as a business.”
REG grants are availablke through the Rural Development Programme for England (RDPE) which is managed by Advantage West Midlands and administered by Herefordshire Council.
