Sure Purity awarded Queen’s Award for Enterprise, International Trade

Ms Lucy Winskell OBE, His Majesty’s Lord-Lieutenant of Tyne and Wear, has presented North East manufacturer, Sure Purity Limited, with the Queen’s Award for Enterprise, International Trade 2022.

Visiting the company ’ s Blaydon manufacturing base, the LordLieutenant of Tyne and Wear was joined by the Mayor of Gateshead, Councillor Dot Burnett, who celebrated the achievement. Having received notice of the Queen’s Award for Enterprise in 2022, Sure Purity became one of just eight North East businesses to receive this prestigious business award

Sure Purity manufactures carbon dioxide polishing filtration systems used by the beverage industry to prevent product contamination The unique technology removes harmful trace impurities from carbon dioxide which can be a cause of food safety recalls in the industry. Sure Purity works with a host of international clients including the world’s two largest beverage brands, who now require their bottling partners to use Sure Purity’s polishing filters

Established in 2016 by Gary Robson, Sure Purity’s CEO, the Tyne and Wear manufacturer has experienced exponential year-on-year growth, doubling its turnover each year since 2020, and expecting to continue this growth for a fourth year in 2023

The seven-strong team - including a recent apprentice who has just been offered a full-time position - will also continue to expand in the coming year, creating more jobs in the region

Carbonating machines range

Carbonation Techniques Ltd manufactures carbonating machines from 200 and 500 litres per hour manual machine, 1,000 litres per hour semi-automatic with touch screen control, and 2,000 litres up to 60,000 Litres per hour fully automatic machines, with temperature monitoring and pressure adjustment as the temperature in product changes.

Speaking of the company ’ s award and of its future growth plans, Gary Robson said: “It’s a very proud moment for the Sure Purity team and we ’ re on an exciting growth trajectory Having had a brilliant experience of taking on our first apprentice, we are looking to implement a growth strategy whereby for each new hire we also offer an apprentice role “As a former apprentice myself and having recently relocated to a premises on the site of my own initial apprenticeship, I’m passionate about helping to support young people into work and offering an alternative to traditional higher education.”

Ms Lucy Winskell said: “The Queen’s Awards for Enterprise are the country’s most prestigious business awards and are not awarded lightly The businesses who receive this commendation must demonstrate true excellence in their field and Sure Purity’s award is recognition of their outstanding achievement.”

The award presentation was attended by 40 invited guests including local businesses who supply the firm and Blaydon’s current MP Liz Twist surepurity.com

The 1,000 and above have recently been updated to touch screen control, making the machines even easier to use Touch screen recipe selection change over, with minimum waste, allows programmable recipe selections, giving state-of-the-art control technology for the highest accuracy and consistency of CO2/Nitrogen within the product.

The machines are able to carbonate a range of product including, beers, cider, wines, soft drinks, alcopops, water, kombucha, and - says the company, ‘well pretty most any product’

Environmentally friendly specifications include:-

• Lower carbonation pressures.

• Lower power consumption to be more cost-effective.

• Lower CO2 pressures required during carbonation: Less filling pressures required, less CO2 wastage

• More stables saturation of CO2 in the product resulting in less foaming during filling on more difficult products

• CO2 being used efficiently with less CO2 wastage to be more cost effective

• Machine will give greater efficiency and lower running costs www.carbotech.co.uk

Charles Faram’s Harlequin big winner at Hops awards

Herefordshire hop grower, Sarah Hawkins, and farm Manager Matt Bailey of The Farm in Bosbury, travelled to the Pure Craft Bar in Birmingham on Friday to pick up the award for the Best British Hop Sample at the most prestigious hop awards ceremony for British hops in the UK.

The competition, organised by the Institute of Brewing and Distilling (IBD), brought together samples from every hop grower in the UK The hop variety samples were judged in November by an expert group of leading brewers and the sample they selected as overall champion was Sarah’s sample of the new variety, Harlequin.

This variety has recently been developed by Charles Faram to enable UK growers to produce hops that will compete with the fruity “ new world” flavoured hops from the USA and New Zealand, and to reduce British craft brewers' reliance on imported hops for beer styles such as New England IPAs

and India Pale Ales.

Sarah said, “We are over the moon to have won this award, it is such a fantastic achievement for all of us at the farm and especially for Matt and his team who have put an incredible amount of work in to produce these beautiful hops ”

Matt commented: “To be honest, I am not surprised that the judges selected the Harlequin variety. When we are picking them during harvest the aromas coming from the kilns are just incredible; you can tell from a mile away that we are picking Harlequin!” www.charlesfaram.co.uk