During the run up to Christmas over the last few years, employees at local boiler manufacturer, Baxi, have collected food to help local people in crisis.
This year, however, as well as collecting over 60kg of food for Warwick and Leamington Foodbank, the company has gone one step further and is providing secure storage for at least 400 crates of food in its warehouse.
Andy Bower, Operations Manager, Warwick and Leamington Foodbank, explains: “As the number of people we help increases, the need for storage space is also increasing. This generous offer from Baxi means that we are able to have just one central offsite storage area rather than using four, much smaller sites. And it is only a mile from our small distribution warehouse at All Saint’s Church, Emscote, where we make up the orders for our six distributions centres.”
The secure area in the Baxi warehouse has been made possible due to the dedication of Senior Stock Controller, Karen Bell. She raised the money to purchase the caging by selling scrap metal that had been cluttering up the warehouse.
“It made perfect sense,” she says. “We are pleased to offer this space in our warehouse for a cause that is very dear to all of us at Baxi. We needed to get rid of the rubbish, and we were delighted to be able to use the money it raised to buy purpose-made fencing to make the area secure.”
Andy Bower concludes: “Warwick and Leamington Foodbank is currently feeding about 225 local people in crisis each month, which equates to giving out 400-450 kilos of food, so we really appreciate the help that Baxi has given us to make our job a bit easier.”
To find out more about Warwick and Leamington Foodbank, please visit http://warwickandleamington.foodbank.org.uk
