00:00Results for a snack manufacturer, the opening of a new pizza restaurant, and a new beach
00:04volleyball centre, featuring today's business briefing.
00:09Good morning, Phil.
00:13Good morning, Stephen.
00:14Well, we're starting off today with results for Calbee UK, the snack manufacturer behind
00:19the Seabooks, Crisps and Harvest Snaps brands, which you may or may not be familiar with.
00:24It's a really good year for the company's sales.
00:27They grew to 71.6 million in their latest accounts for 2024.
00:32That's up from about 66 million last year.
00:35What they have said, however, is that pre-tax profit dipped slightly during the year, and
00:39that was impacted by an expansion project that the company undertook at its Bradford plan,
00:43where they make Seabook Crisps.
00:46That's one of the biggest projects in the company's history.
00:48It's the biggest of its kind that they've ever done.
00:51But there were delays during the commissioning phase, and that impacted stock levels over
00:55the summer and through into Christmas.
00:57The good news, though, is that that issue has been finished.
01:00The project is now completed, serve itself as a return to normal.
01:04The company said that the wider £15 million investment in Bradford and its other facility
01:09in Deeside means that sales growth is expected in 2025.
01:13So the directors are really upbeat, and it sounds like it's good news for them going forward.
01:17Yeah, really good.
01:18You have a dip one year, but then come back stronger the next year when everything's in
01:22order.
01:23Well, I've got another food-related story.
01:27This one's in our southwest region.
01:30This is Rudy's Pizza, who are opening their 34th restaurant in Bristol.
01:37They opened their first one in 2015 in Ancote in Manchester, not too far away from where
01:44we're sitting now.
01:46But the new one in Bristol, it's going to be housed at the old Royal Bank of Scotland branch
01:52on Baldwin Street, which has been vacant since 2021.
01:59It's a 3,000 square foot venue and will offer about 120 covers.
02:05And there's also a facility to produce something outdoors as well for customers.
02:11And importantly for that part of the city, it's going to create 40 new jobs, obviously
02:18management, cooking staff, and other front of house staff as well.
02:24So really exciting for Bristol.
02:26And I'm sure that our colleague, Remy Greasley, who's leaving us from the northwest to join our
02:33southwest team next week, I'm sure he'll be one of the first people through the door knowing Remy.
02:40So good luck to Remy on his new appointment.
02:43Yeah, great.
02:44We've got a really interesting story in the Midlands as well today.
02:47Volleyball England has released new designs for its proposed National Beach Volleyball Centre.
02:53That might come as a bit of a surprise to you.
02:55That will be located in Birmingham rather than one of England's...
02:58Couldn't get further away from a beach, but there we are.
03:01It will be based at Birmingham City University's Moor Lane site and will comprise four courts.
03:07It's designed to support England's elite beach volleyball and is said to be the first facility
03:13of its kind in Europe.
03:15It's going to provide year-round training facilities, which should of course be extremely useful
03:20given the British weather.
03:21Indeed, yes.
03:22Especially over the winter.
03:23I was not the first place where they're going from the south of Spain, but...
03:26Yeah.
03:27Birmingham?
03:28It's nice to have options, I suppose, and options closer to home.
03:31Absolutely.
03:32The Centre itself will reuse the sand and infrastructure from the Commonwealth Games, where Britain actually
03:37scored a bronze medal in the beach volleyball, so already strong foundations to build on there.
03:43Volleyball England are hoping the Centre will go on to produce future Olympians as well,
03:47so they've got some big hopes.
03:49Subject to planning permission, the construction should hopefully start this year and could be
03:53completed by the autumn, so we'll see.
03:55And I wonder whether the general public would be allowed in to use the facility as well at
04:00some stage.
04:01Well, we would hope, yes.
04:02Certainly, I'm sure it would be a popular spectator, but I believe it was during the
04:05Commonwealth Games.
04:06It did.
04:07Can't imagine why.
04:08I'd just like to also highlight an event that I'm chairing next week.
04:13Very excited about the North East Economic Future event.
04:17It's at the core at Helix in Newcastle.
04:21Really good venue.
04:23We have a full house registered already.
04:27Basically, we're going to be looking at the North East Combined Authority's new or recently
04:34published 10-year plan for the region, how that's going to look for the region, what investment
04:41opportunities they're looking at pushing, the sector opportunities as well.
04:47There are some really key sectors in the North East that are going to be pushed.
04:52We're also going to look at some of the major regeneration hotspots around the region, not
04:57just in Newcastle, but around the other parts of the North East as well.
05:03And crucially, from a Combined Authority perspective, they want to really push the fact that they're open for business and looking for engagement from businesses in the region.
05:16Henry Kippin, the Chief Executive of the Combined Authority will be speaking at the event, along with business owners and other regional experts who are going to give us a really good show, I'm sure.
05:33So we're very excited about that and looking forward to it very much.
05:36It's happening next Thursday morning at the Core at the Helix.
05:39If you haven't registered, please do. There aren't many spaces left, but it's worth going on. We'll be live streaming it at the same time.
05:49So even if you can't get a room in on the place, you should be able to live stream it from your desktop or wherever.
05:59So if you want to do that, please go on to InsiderMedia.com and follow the links to the events pages.
06:07And of course, on the sites, you can also look at all the news stories that we're running this morning from around the UK.
06:16So that's it from us. I hope you have a good morning and a good day. Thank you.
