- Area:
- Wales
- Programme:
- Village SOS
- Release date:
- 12 10 2012
A year after they appeared on a major BBC TV series, three Welsh community enterprises funded with over £400,000 each in Big Lottery Fund cash reveal how they have weathered the economic downturn and the washout summer to ensure the survival of their community led business ventures.
In May 2010, the Ty Talcen charity in Carmarthenshire and Ashfield Community Enterprise Ltd (ACE) and the Melin Talgarth Mill projects in Powys were all awarded £400,000 in National Lottery funding through Village SOS, a scheme by the Big Lottery Fund (BIG) and the BBC which aimed to inspire a rural revival across the UK.
The Ty Talcen charity in Carmarthenshire and the Melin Talgarth Mill project in Powys had the journey of their business ventures documented by the BBC for Village SOS, a primetime TV series aired last year. Ashfield Community Enterprise Ltd in Powys also formed part of the Village SOS Learning Campaign which accompanied the BBC One TV Series.
A year after the TV presenter and entrepreneur Sarah Beeny left them to their own devices and the cameras stopped rolling, we caught up with the projects to find out how they have been getting on in their first year of business.
So was it a magical year for Myddfai?
In Carmarthenshire, the project workers behind the Ty Talcen charity and Myddfai Ty Talcen Limited have been working hard within the village of Myddfai.
Myddfai Trading Company Limited a company that shares the same social enterprise objective of regeneration as the charity has further developed the Myddfai Brand. A whole new range of Myddfai Trading Company products sell under the brand. Their range of products include herbal teas, luxury soaps, and plant-based cosmetics as well as branded kitchenware, gifts and crafts.
To market the village as a destination for well-being breaks and other holidays to the Brecon Beacons National Park, the project also demolished the old crumbling village hall to build a new Visitor and Interpretation Centre which includes a social enterprise, shop, cafe and auditorium which now provides a crucial social hub for local residents and a focus point for tourists to the area.
With products flying off the shelves, the Myddfai Trading Company has now moved into bigger commercial premises just outside Llangadog in order to develop, pack and dispatch all of their products effectively. Their regular customers include CADW, the National Trust and the Wales Millennium Centre and they have also introduced a new line of toiletries which are now being sold in guest houses and hotels locally- with plans to expand further afield in the future. In its first year, the project has also won a host of local and national tourism and business awards.
Looking back at their first year of business, Hugh Davies, the Project Leader and a Company Director of the Myddfai Companies says: “Our brand has been extremely well received throughout Wales and we changed the commercial dimension so that the Myddfai Trading Company is now in charge of all commercial aspects of selling the branded products, with Mike Hill the Managing Director doing an excellent job.”
“The shop at the centre now comes under the Ty Talcen Charity and is run as an operational social enterprise called Myddfai Ty Talcen alongside the Myddfai Trading Company. Myddfai is getting to be known by its products and its wonderful new centre. Over fifty small individual businesses are now selling from the shop. We actually sell the trading company products to the shop at the centre and they benefit from the retail mark up. The shop, the centre and the cafe are all making a modest profit, which is great. Much of this is because of our superb team of volunteers.”
Since opening in June last year, around 8,000 visitors from all over the world have been to the centre; three new jobs have been created and they now boast around sixty volunteers on the books. The centre is also doing well with regards to hosting community events, wedding receptions, conferences and ticketed shows.
“We’re looking to do more weddings and conferences because they are potentially big earners for us,” says Hugh.
“The challenges are day to day economically but we’re doing well despite the lousy summer we’ve had. Everyone’s constantly working hard to sell and make both elements of the project sustainable. It’s challenging but we’re still standing and we’ve got two surviving companies, a very well respected brand, and a superb destination.”
Did Talgarth Mill grind to a halt or rise to the challenge?
The Melin Talgarth Mill project in the town of Talgarth, Powys, used their funding to renovate an old 18th century watermill in the town and reinstate it as a working flour mill with an adjoining cafe where bakery products are produced and then sold in the local area. Visitors are able to enjoy guided tours of the mill and the old mill cottage has been transformed into a shop which is let out to a local business as part of their objectives to encourage small, local businesses to develop. The project enjoyed phenomenal success in the wake of appearing on the TV series but how have they fared a year after the cameras stopped rolling?
The project recently reached the finals of the Powys Business Awards and featured in the World Travel Guide magazine, making a good impression with their baked products. But has it been a smooth operation?
Chris Blake, a Member of the Board of Directors at Melin Talgarth Mill, said: “We had a huge boost from the TV programme which lasted us about three months and we were completely swamped. We didn’t get as many visitors this summer as we thought but we didn’t know what to expect and we had no idea what an ordinary summer without the TV programme would be like. We are slightly down on what we budgeted this year but just over a year after we opened we have welcomed over 17,000 visitors to the mill.”
The project now uses the flour they mill to produce a range of baked products in the café and the flour and bread are also sold to visitors, restaurants, cafes and farm shops.
“It’s not been a good summer for tourists but it’s been a very good summer for milling with all the rain turning the water wheel,” says Chris
However, the team have employed a new Manager and now have big plans for the future including paid for baking and milling courses and plans to enhance the use of the venue as a conferencing and meeting facility.
“We’ve had successful Film and Pizza evenings working with the Town Hall next door,” says Chris
“It was ten pounds for a film ticket and a pizza - a recession proof offer which has been very popular.”
“When it boils down to it, we are a tourist venue and we need to make money in the summer. Building up the off peak revenue is a challenge but we get a lot of coach tours coming by us now. There’s more we can do there but it’s working well.”
“We now have to meet the challenge of building a long term sustainable tourism business in a small town. This is what the next ten years is about- getting the marketing right and developing more and more business links. It’s been hard work but it’s what we expected. We’re now looking forward to next summer and hope it isn’t a complete washout again.”
Did Ashfield grow this year?
In the village of Howey, near Llandrindod Wells, volunteers at the Ashfield Community Enterprise Ltd (ACE) used their funding to re-develop a dilapidated local tree nursery and transform it into a thriving community-owned market garden. The project offers growing facilities for the local community to produce local foods and sell under the Ashfield brand. As part of the plans, a house on the site has also been refurbished and let out to local people.
Having endured one of the coldest winters and wettest summers in recent memory, volunteers and workers at Ashfield had to continuously battle the elements to ensure the enterprise and their crops survived. It’s been a challenging year for Ashfield but the enterprise is still ploughing ahead and has exciting plans for the future.
Highlighting the progress made and their aspirations for the future, ACE Ltd Secretary, Mag Richards, said: “We’ve got some tricky times coming up but we’re doing ok at the moment. It’s not straight forward and there are peaks and troughs. It’s lucky that we have poly tunnels because otherwise we would have been stuffed with the weather we’ve had this year. Our poly tunnels are full of produce and our plants are going well. We are now specialising in growing hardy perennials which can grow in the cold and wet climate of Radnorshire and we’ve started selling cut flowers as well.”
“We started with eleven potential income streams and we met our targets with some of them and with others we haven’t. It’s been a bit of a struggle. Basically we’re looking at maximising our income by generating new ideas and products because you have to be quite flexible and responsive to the local market.”
One of Ashfield’s biggest success stories is becoming the first community Land Trust in Wales to deliver affordable housing: “We converted the house on the land into two flats and we’ve now let them out as affordable housing which generates income,” says Mag.
And there are numerous other triumphs for Ashfield. Local groups and individuals are now renting spaces to actively grow on the site and they have built a strong customer base for their range of fruit, vegetables, plants and flowers.
They now run a weekly market stall to sell their produce and have secured an established contract with local health food shops to sell their plants and herbs.
“Buying the site, renovating it and watching people buy our produce has been the biggest achievement so far for me personally,” says Mag.
The project is now looking to diversify and develop new markets and partnerships around their products including developing a range of preserved foods.
“You can build up your stock with preserved food such as chutneys, jams and juices,” says Mag.
“We hope to develop some new products through an intergenerational programme by interviewing older people in the area who remember how they used to preserve food. We will have a new processing kitchen and we hope people will use the kitchen to develop their own micro businesses and ways of preserving fruit and vegetables like they used to do in the old days.”
Reflecting on their first year, Mag added: “It’s been exhausting, exciting and challenging. The biggest challenge is balancing income generation against meaningful community engagement and working with volunteers. We still have a long way to go and we would still like to attract more people and volunteers onto the site. Our primary aim is not to make lots of money, but to make enough money to keep the community involvement going and retain the staff that we have.”
For more information on Village SOS log on to www.villagesos.org.uk
Further Information:
Big Lottery Fund Press Office: 02920 678 207
Out of Hours Contact: 07760 171 431
Public Enquiries Line: 0845 4 10 20 30
Textphone: 0845 6021 659
Full details of the Big Lottery Fund programmes and grant awards are available at: www.biglotteryfund.org.uk
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