Coronavirus: Latest news from West Midlands businesses

Warwickshire County Cricket Club’s official charity, the Edgbaston Foundation, has struck a partnership with charity Thrive Together Birmingham to use Edgbaston Stadium as a food sorting and distribution centre that will support local foodbanks and community groups.

With the car park at Edgbaston Stadium already donated to the Department of Health and Social Care to be a COVID-19 drive-through test centre, Thrive Together Birmingham will store non-perishable food within Edgbaston’s Exhibition Hall and it will work with volunteers to sort, repackage and distribute the items to organisations which are supporting those in need.

No food donations can be made on-site at Edgbaston, with the nearby St. Mary and Saint Ambrose Church, on Raglan Road, acting as a collection centre between 11am and 3.30pm every Friday.

Ravi Masih, head of community engagement at Warwickshire CCC and lead of the Edgbaston Foundation, said: “Since we moved into the forced stadium closure, Club staff have been committed to doing all that we can to make a difference in our local community by providing free use of our stadium and grounds, fundraising for important causes, and through volunteering.

“We’re thrilled that we can build on our community response during this period by working with such a fantastic charity, in Thrive Together Birmingham, to support those in need.”

Fred Rattley, CEO of Thrive Together Birmingham, said: ‘‘We are delighted that the Edgbaston Foundation have partnered with Thrive Together Birmingham to collect much needed food to help the Brum Together coalition of organisations providing emergency food to people who are most impacted by COVID-19.”

As a further part of Warwickshire CCC’s community response, its staff have committed to raising funds for Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham Charity and the NSPCC’s Childline service in Birmingham through the 2.6 Challenge.

More than 30 staff are taking part in the challenge and have collectively pledged to cover Warwickshire’s founding year of 1882, in kilometres, before the end of May.

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Jaguar and Land Rover has now deployed 362 vehicles globally to support charitable organisations and front-line workers tackling the spread of coronavirus.

Most recently, a fleet of 15 Jaguars has been supplied to support the Help NHS Heroes campaign – a nationwide effort delivering vital supplies to NHS staff.

Boxes containing foodstuffs and other essential supplies can be ordered via a bespoke app before being made ready for collection at their NHS place of work. The scheme is helping thousands of frontline NHS staff and carers by providing easy access to fresh food. The fleet of Jaguars will now enable convenient home deliveries too.

“This fleet of Jaguars will make a huge difference in our ability to deliver essential supplies to NHS staff at a time when we have a duty to support these heroes in our communities,” said Jason Mawer, founder of Help NHS Heroes.

In South Africa, the Jaguar Land Rover team has partnered with the South African Red Cross and the Minnie Dlamini Foundation to deliver more than 2,400 food packs to those most vulnerable in their society – enough to last a  month – as part of the Feeding South Africa Together initiative.

The company is also working closely with the UK government and has offered its research and engineering expertise, as well as digital engineering and design, printing of 3D models and prototypes, machine learning, artificial intelligence and data science support.

Jaguar Land Rover is also scaling up production of its protective face visors in a continued effort to support the fight against Coronavirus. New tooling, developed by WHS Plastics, will produce a further 14,000 visors each week for key workers across the UK.

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Carousel Logistics and Birmingham Airport have agreed an arrangement to safeguard Carousel’s time-critical air cargo network from Europe.

Linking the UK with key manufacturing regions in mainland Europe, Carousel flies its cargo planes into Birmingham each weekday night, carrying urgent parts, products and equipment, many of which are needed in the fight against COVID-19.

In making this commitment to the airport, Carousel has ensured that it can continue to deliver items such as COVID-19 testing kits, PPE equipment, high-tech medical devices, pharmaceuticals, as well as critical materials handling and agricultural spare parts on behalf of leading manufacturers.

With the reduction in scheduled services to and from Birmingham, due to the pandemic, the airport has reduced runway opening times but has continued to ensure it supports operations to meet demand for cargo, passenger and emergency flights. With Carousel’s commitment, the airport can continue to operate a reduced runway schedule whilst ensuring that fast and early morning deliveries, like those offered by Carousel’s nightly service, can also continue.

Carousel flies more than 20 tonnes of critical equipment each night from Frankfurt and Maastricht, for a range of industries including the Medical, Agricultural and Materials Handling sectors. A third-leg also runs onward from Birmingham into Dublin each evening.

Carousel co-founder and group CEO, Graham Martin, said:  “Each night, our flight moves potentially life-saving products, as well as critical parts required in the food production and distribution industry, so when we were faced with the possibility of delays to our services, we knew we had to do everything we could to keep them operating at the pace and efficiency our clients require. Delaying our service just wasn’t an option.

“Today’s announcement is testament to the great relationship we have with Birmingham Airport and our shared belief of doing whatever is necessary to keep critical services running in this challenging time. We’d like to thank them for their collaboration and ongoing support.”

Birmingham Airport CEO, Nick Barton, said: “Birmingham Airport is crucial to our region’s infrastructure and has remained operational throughout this pandemic to support in the transit of critical goods as well as emergency operations and passenger services.

“We are very proud to have been able to work with Carousel to agree an operational schedule to ensure its vital cargo provisions continue to be delivered into the region. Airports will be fundamental to the UK’s recovery and Birmingham Airport is ready to play its part in getting people and critical goods from around the world as and when demand returns.”