Westmorland looks at funding options for M5 development

WESTMORLAND, the family-owned firm led by award-winning entrepreneur Sarah Dunning, is looking at fund-raising options for its £35m service station development on the M5.

Speaking to TheBusinessDesk.com, Sarah Dunning said Westmorland – which was founded by her farmer parents John and Barbara in 1972, is working with business advisers KPMG on options for the £38m turnover business.

She said: “We are fairly open-minded at this stage regarding the funding – as a family business taking in external equity would be a big step, but the M5 project is a big step for us so we are not ruling anything out at this stage.

“The Gloucestershire project is a big challenge – not least being 200 miles away, but it’s a highly exciting new phase for the business and for me too.”

Planning permission for the pioneering, sustainable M5 service-station was granted to Westmorland last August.

The company, which already runs the award-winning Tebay service area on the M6, will build the new facility in Gloucestershire between junctions 11a and 12 of the M5, north and southbound.

The development will create 300 jobs and an additional 200 people through the construction process, which should begin later this year, and open in 2013.

Westmorland is quite unlike other motorway service area operators -customers won’t find M&S food outlets, or Costa Coffee or Burger King franchises. Instead, there is a focus on supporting local food producers, thus supporting the regional economy.

“There are very few new opportunities for motorway service areas – and the planning regulations you have to go through are huge, but I believe this is an industry where we know we can make a difference,” Sarah Dunning says.

For the M5 scheme, Westmorland has formed a partnership with a regeneration charity, which will see £10m pumped into communuty projects over a 20-year period after opening.

Sarah, who after a spell in London with investment bank NM Rothschild, returned to her roots in Cumbria in 1999, before taking over the running of the business from her father in 2005, says:”Communuity and sustainability are the cornerstones of our values as a business.”

As well as the motorway services on the M6, the Westmorland group includes the Rheged Centre in Penrith which is a leisure, conference and tourist attraction, farms shops, caravan parks and a hotel.