Cumbria Business Growth Hub has made a real difference to Wild & Fruitful and Shiloh Coffee Roasters thanks to grant funding.

We supported Wild & Fruitful with £24,415 covering 50% of the cost of their new lidding and labelling line.

Wild & Fruitful's process involved applying lids and labels to bottles by hand. As their business grew, this was creating a bottleneck, slowing down production.

Jake and David who run the business, came to us and applied for a grant scheme funded by the Rural England Prosperity Fund, provided through Cumberland Council. They used the funding to purchase a machine which applies the lids and labels automatically. This has made their process 70% more efficient, meaning they can increase output to keep up with the demand for their product and look to take on more staff.

Jake Winter said: “It was a bit of a learning curve applying for the grant, because we’d never done that before. But everyone at Cumbria Growth Hub was really helpful, couldn’t help us enough to be honest. Made the experience as easy as possible!”

Watch Wild & Fruitful’s video here 

Shiloh Coffee Roasters were facing a bottleneck in production. Their previous coffee roasting machine had limited capacity, meaning it took far too long to fulfil orders. This was slowing down the processing of orders placed via his website, which was holding the business back and making it difficult to keep up with demand.

Founder Mark Armstrong came to us and applied for a grant scheme funded by the Rural England Prosperity Fund, provided through Cumberland Council. He secured £7,750 towards a new coffee machine capable of handling 20kg of coffee beans in a single batch. This upgrade has halved the time it takes to roast, allowing him to produce up to 200kg of coffee per day—double his previous capacity.

With this increased capacity, Mark is now in a strong position to scale the business. He can confidently explore opportunities to supply larger clients and expand his customer base. The new machine is also more environmentally friendly, supporting his commitment to sustainability. On a personal level, the improved efficiency means Mark spends less time working and more quality time at home with his young family.

Watch Shiloh Coffee Roasters video here