NATIONAL CIDER FESTIVAL GENERATING GLOBAL INTEREST
PLANS for a National Cider Festival in the South West is generating major business interest from across the UK and globe.
International trade expert Linda Middleton-Jones is aiming to organise the first national festival in 2019, that could then lead to a much bigger international festival in 2020, helping to celebrate the Mayflower 400th celebrations, she said.
“I’m very excited at the level of interest shown in putting together the UK’s first ever National Cider Festival. We are looking to stage an ‘expression of interest’ meeting where UK cider producers, companies, and potential partners can register an interest, and look at sponsorship and marketing opportunities etc.”
“We already have a major Bank looking to fund a delegation visit to Gijon, and will also bring a business group from northern Spain to the South West. We are especially interested in UK cider manufacturers, sponsors, marketing experts, local businesses, and Government agencies to support Britain’s first ever ‘National Cider Festival’, she said.
“We all enjoy a glass of cider and it’s a great produce, and high-time we promoted it on the national and international stages,” she added.
“Now is a good time post-Brexit to raise our national cider glass, and create the National Cider Festival 2019, and Plymouth and the South West – is the ideal location to celebrate one of our finest national drinks.”
Miss Middleton-Jones is also managing director of her own company: Middleton-Jones and International Trade Matters, and a director on the Devon Chamber of Commerce.
In June 2017 she helped organise a major symposium, South West Summit: Blueprint for a Global Britain, in Plymouth to help firms sell overseas, particularly once the UK has left the European Union.
Miss Middleton-Jones is a law graduate who specialised in international trade law and European law and has worked with chambers of commerce in Plymouth and Somerset and with the Government’s now defunct Manufacturing Advisory Service.
The Natural Cider of Gijón festival has been staged in the largest city in Asturias during the last week of August for several decades.
It features an extensive programme of activities including urban art, ephemeral art, a little cider and apple market, courses on cider pouring, a cider bus, visits to emblematic cider cellars, a cider pouring competition, theatre, cancios de chigre (traditional songs), food tasting and a presentation of prizes.
Each year it floods streets and squares with visitors.
To find out more about tourism in Gijon and Asturias visit www.turismoasturias.es/…/fiestas-de-interes-turistico/festi…
To contact Linda Middleton-Jones: linda@middleton-jones.com or website: www.middleton-jones.