Show’s over for NW Fine Foods

9:40am Friday 4th July 2008

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ONE of the area’s biggest champions of local food has gone into liquidation. Less than three weeks after staging its seventh ‘food lovers’ festival’ at the Westmorland County Showground, the regional food promotion company North West Fine Foods this week sent out letters to its 200 producer members announcing its demise. The organisation - which has fought the corners of Cheshire, Merseyside and Greater Manchester, as well as Cumbria and Lancashire over the past 14 years – had hailed this year’s festival a success. But a report commissioned by Food Northwest (the regional food group launched in 2006 by the North West Development Agency) said food support needed to be ‘streamlined’ and that finding, coupled with NWFF receiving confirmation that there would be no more money until January next year prompted an emergency meeting at which the directors decided to fold NWFF and appoint a liquidator. NWFF Cumbria director John Tiscornia said the company could have gone for another couple of months, but it was better to go now. Other producers contacted we contacted suggested that NWFF’s downfall was nothing to do with the local food economy, which is thriving, but purely to do with the drying-up of funding. The feeling was that local foods were now available on high streets all over the country thanks NWFF raising their profile.

For story in full, see the July 4 Westmorland Gazette.