AN Innovating for Success grant from Cumbria Local Enterprise Partnership (CLEP) is helping a west Cumbrian company grow its business and improve its efficiency and safety.

Jacksons Timber, who have three timber yards and one manufacturing site, received grant funding of £50,000 towards the total project costs of £100,000 to buy equipment for a new production facility at Lillyhall.

They worked with a local engineering company to create handling equipment that helps staff move engineered timber products around the factory and into storage as Daniel Mossop, director at Jacksons Timber Ltd, explained: “Our timber business has grown substantially in recent years. We are currently developing a new production facility, to house cutting-edge machinery. This should treble our production capacity and improve our efficiency.

“The grant has allowed us to develop innovative custom designs for industrial trolleys and stands to help us move products safely and efficiently around the factory. This includes a stillage or metal pallet, which will help move a particularly heavy, and a high growth product called a spandrel panel through our factory safely. We believe that the bespoke stands, trolleys and pallets are key to the success of our engineered product line.”

The family run business has branches at Whitehaven, Calderbridge and Barrow, and its dedicated roof truss, Posi Joist and I-Joist engineering plant is based in Workington.

Jo Lappin, Chief Executive of the Cumbria LEP, said: “It’s great to see businesses like Jacksons Timber using the Innovating for Success programme to support their ambitions. We launched Innovating for Success to help small and medium sized business across Cumbria to invest in innovation or decarbonisation projects.

Jo added “I am delighted that the grant that we have provided has encouraged Jacksons Timber to invest in the further growth of the business and to deliver an innovation that will make that growth easier and hopefully faster.

The LEP’s ‘Innovating for Success’ grant, launched a year ago (September 2023) has resulted in dozens of businesses being awarded a share of a £1million grant to either support innovation or cut carbon emissions. Grants are split into two areas:

• Innovation: Maximum grants of up to £50,000 to part fund initiatives that turn new ideas into commercially viable and deliverable propositions.

• Carbon reduction: Maximum grants of up to £20,000 to part fund practical projects that will help businesses reduce energy usage or increase renewable energy production.

Independent economic assessment by the LEP has confirmed that over a 10-year period, the Innovating for Success investments will deliver an additional £37million of economic growth, create an additional 97 full time equivalent jobs and save over 4,160 tonnes of CO2.

For information about Jacksons Timber visit https://jacksonstimber.co.uk/ For more information about CLEP’s grants and support for businesses visit https://www.thecumbrialep.co.uk/