The co-founder of Huddersfield ice cream company Yummy Yorkshire has beaten off stiff competition to win Home-based Business Woman of the year at the Forward Ladies 2012 Women in Business Awards. Winners were announced at the ceremony at The Queens Hotel, Leeds on 16 November.
Louise Holmes, who was also shortlisted in the Manufacturing Business Woman of the Year category, was chosen as the winner of the Home-based category, sponsored by the Yorkshire Post. Photographer Andrea Barrett and Liz Devine Wright of Simply Devine were also nominated in the Home-based category.
Judges voted Louise as Home-based Business Woman of the year due to Yummy Yorkshire’s continued growth despite the downturn saying: ‘Louise takes the quality of her products very seriously and has continued to grow through introducing new flavours. She utilises every opportunity to get her product out there through creative routes to market’.
Louise established Yummy Yorkshire together with her husband Jeremy in 2007 to diversify their main milk processing business and to enhance the value of milk from their herd. She is responsible for ice cream production and the development of new flavours as well as marketing, PR and administrative work for the company.
Initially just selling ice cream from their farm gates, Yummy Yorkshire now produces 27,500 litres of ice cream a year, supplying farm shops, restaurants and visitor attractions across the county. They also have their own dedicated ice cream parlour and coffee shop on the farm, which is open 7 days a week and draws in visitors from far and wide.
Speaking about her award win Louise says: “I was absolutely thrilled to bits to receive this award. Running a home-based business is so difficult when you are balancing the needs of the business with a young family so winning this felt like a rather nice pat on the back.”
Hosted by Liz Green of BBC Radio Leeds, the Women in Business Awards recognise the achievements of professional business women in the North West of England, the Isle of Man and Yorkshire and The Humber and comprise of 12 individual categories as well as an overall Business Woman of the Year award.
The awards were launched in 2010 by the 11,000-strong networking organisation Forward Ladies, which has a group covering Kirklees and Calderdale. A separate awards ceremony is held for the North West and the Isle of Man.
According to the organisers of the awards, a record number of entries was made this year and the standard was extremely high.