A specialist £5.5m food business park in Leicester has scooped a prestigious regional accolade at the RICS East Midlands awards.
Leicester Food Park, which was built by contractor Willmott Dixon, beat off competition from across the region to win the Commercial category at the awards ceremony held at Kelham Hall last week (21 April).
The project received £3.4m in funding from the European Regional Development Fund with additional funding provided by Leicester City Council which has set out the food and drink sector as a target area for growth for the city.
Nick Heath, operations director at Willmott Dixon in the East Midlands, said: “This is a significant project for Leicester which had been in the pipeline for more than a decade so we are very pleased that it has been recognised with this RICS Award.
“Food and drink has been identified by city mayor Peter Soulsby as a key growth area for Leicester and this food park will encourage investment into the sector in the city and support that strategy.”
The new food park is comprised of 19,250 sq ft of high quality bespoke food grade units ranging in size from 1,000 to 5,000 sq ft to accommodate a range of business sizes.
Located at High View Close off Lewisher Road, the food park features more than 150 solar panels across the three buildings, which are predicted to provide around 17 per cent of the total energy demand for the site.
Built on a former brownfield site in North Leicester, the park was designed to accommodate more than 35 businesses, including established firms in the sector and start-ups looking for room to grow.
