It was my great pleasure to formally open this new distribution centre. It will improve efficiency and drive down costs. I had an opportunity to eat a school meal and I have to say I did not recognise it as one. It was tasty, not over cooked and I am told very balanced.

A great success story that is likely to produce revenue for the Council as well as providing a fantastic service for our schools and meeting the need to provide balanced meals for our children.

In June of this year, Cambridgeshire Catering & Cleaning Services, (CCS) was awarded a 4/5 year contract, to supply school meals to Northamptonshire Schools from September 2011. This is in addition to supplying the schools in Cambridgeshire. All the meals will be prepared and delivered from CCS’s production centre, which is based in Huntingdon and are expected to reach 18,000 meals per day once all the Northamptonshire schools are up and running.

To meet this demand, CCS has had to secure additional facilities and has now separated the two major elements of the work involved. All food production is undertaken from the operations original facilities at C3, on the Ermine Business Park in Huntingdon. All distribution will now be from the new Distribution Centre at Tower Close, in Huntingdon.

The securing of this contract has lead to a number of full and part time jobs being created, for production and delivery staff, with the number of meals produced each year expected to top 4 million.