News in brief: Bulmers anchored by Gripple; Accolades for SIV and more

SHEFFIELD International Venues (SIV) has picked up three accolades for its events staff and programming at the Sheffield Hospitality Awards.

The Sheffield City Hall Conference and Events team won the Team of the Year award; Sarah Webb from Don Valley Stadium won the Hospitality Sheffield Innovator of the Year award and Sheffield City Hall stage electrician Brain Cory won the Unsung Hero Award.

The awards, organised by Hospitality Sheffield at Sheffield City Hall, recognised excellence in service and promotional work in the Sheffield tourism industry, and add to an ever growing portfolio of leisure and entertainment accolades won by SIV which has grown rapidly over the past 10 years to become one of the largest sport, leisure and entertainment companies in Europe.

With an annual turnover of approximately £20m, the company hosts more than 2,000 events every year.

For more information about events at SIV visit www.sivltd.com.

::

GRIPPLE – the Sheffield-based engineering company – has supplied cider producer Bulmers with a specialist anchoring product to secure its privately owned orchards.

More than 2,000 of the revolutionary new products, which combines a Fenox anchor, produced in France, with the versatile Gripple Plus Anchor Kit (GPAK), havebeen installed by contractors in new privately-owned orchards across more than 150 acres of farmland in Southern and Northern Ireland, with 1,000 trees planted per acre.

Gripple’s comprehensive anchoring solution involves the pointed end of the Fenox Anchor being hammered into the ground, rooting tendril-like rods firmly into the stoniest terrain.

The Gripple Plus Anchor Kit’s high tensile wire rope is then fed through the anchor, looped around the 2.5m end-posts and secured by a Gripple Plus wire joiner and tensioner. The complete kit provides efficient, strong and stable anchoring and allows year-on-year re-tensioning.

In the new orchards, the installation process was further standardised using another Gripple innovation – the new Torq Tensioning Tool – which, with minimum effort, provides consistent tension via a settable tension gauge.

::

ALEN Lee Widdup, the store manager for Bang & Olufsen of Harrogate has been awarded Salesperson of the Year 2007/08 by Bang & Olufsen UK.

The much coveted accolade was awarded in front of more than 150 peers at the annual Bang & Olufsen Dealer Conference in Cannes earlier this month.

Mr Widdup competed for the award against 300 people across 130 stores in the UK and Ireland.

At the presentation he was praised not only for his sales achievements but also for his excellent customer service skills and attention to aftercare.