HIGH ENERGY DONATION BY FOCUSED NUTRITION

Healthy snack specialist Focused Nutrition has donated 200 energy bars to charity riders Team RedBlack for next week’s Etape De Yorkshire cycle challenge.

Focused Nutrition is based in Stockport, Cheshire, and is best known for its Applejack and FiveaDay ranges of healthy-option flapjacks sold throughout the UK, Europe and the Far East.

Established in 2003 by managing director Martin Rooney, the company employs six people and produces over a hundred thousand bars per month. It has been using CyBake, the popular bakery management system created by York-based RedBlack Software, for three years.

Staff at RedBlack Software have formed a ten-man team to ride in Cyclists Fighting Cancer’s 120 mile Etape de Yorkshire event to be held on June 8, 2014. The 120 mile course for 1000 riders will go from Leeds to Harrogate over the route of the first stage of the 2014 Tour de France, which this year will start in Yorkshire.

Focused Nutrition’s Martin Rooney met up with the RedBlack team when they were exhibiting CyBake at the Foodex food industry conference at the NEC back in March.

He says: “I said we’d be happy to help them along. With this venture, an energy bar sounded like the right way to go.”

Martin Rooney explains that his firm makes many kinds of bars with differing oils, proteins and formulations for various functions. To help Team RedBlack, he made a special batch to suit their particular challenge.

He says: “These bars were formulated with the 120-mile journey in mind. They’ve got a high carbohydrate content that supplies the energy for the journey and they’ve got little flecks of mineral sea salt in there as well to help with the minerals lost through perspiration.

Team RedBlack’s leader Andrew Throup, an account manager at the firm, says: “With ten riders,  we’ve been getting through a lot of snacks during training. With these custom-made chocolate-chip bars, Focused Nutrition has made the perfect contribution to help us cross the finishing line on the day. ”

Cancer has affected Andrew Throup’s family as well as a close friend, which inspired him to get Team RedBlack together and enter the Etape de Yorkshire event. The company set up a Just Giving webpage to gather donations to Cyclists Fighting Cancer as sponsorship for its team at http://www.justgiving.com/TeamRedblack .

Team RedBlack has been sponsored by a number of leading institutions in the British bakery industry including the Craft Bakers Association and the Scottish Bakers association. Other sponsors include British Baker magazine, EPOS Group, Stevens Group, Matchbox Mobile and Electronics Direct.

Many colleagues at RedBlack are avid cyclists. The company’s sales-support department was a winner in last year’s York Cycle Challenge, a three-week competition between workplaces in the city. Their prize was to be part of the cycle escort for the Olympic torch as it travelled through York.