We are proud to announce that Good Call Media has been selected again to produce the launch video for the Made in the Midlands Awards, which celebrate the best of manufacturing in the Midlands region of the UK.

The 2017 Awards, staged by Insider Media, will take place on the 18 May at the Hilton Birmingham Metropole Hotel as part of a black tie dinner which is one of the highlights of the social calendar for the region’s manufacturers with past attendees ranging from AGA and Aston Martin to JLR and JCB.

Click here to see our video for the 2016 Awards.

Our brief this year is to interview some of the winners of the 2016 Awards and spotlight their contribution to the manufacturing might of The Midlands and their thoughts about winning the Made in the Midlands Awards. The sponsors of the 2017 event will also feature in the video, which will be played at the beginning of the Awards ceremony

The project is the latest in an ongoing relationship with Insider Media and our company has also produced content for the Yorkshire Property Industry Awards, the Made in the UK Awards and the Made in Sheffield Awards.

Insider is the UK’s most successful regional B2B media company. Today, Insider’s five regional B2B magazines are read every year by over 200,000 subscribers; they host over 140 market-leading events including award dinners in all regions outside London. Insider also has the UK’s only nation-wide network of regional news emails with 140,000 subscribers and a web site with over 250,000 unique users.

“Our relationship with Insider Media is really important to us,” said Good Call Media co-owner, Fiona Molloy who produces and films out of the Insider projects around the country. “We love to celebrate the fact that manufacturing is definitely not dead in the UK. Far from it, the companies we visit show that manufacturing, particularly at the high end, is thriving here and continues to attract the respect and admiration of other countries where quality products and engineering are valued.

Watch out for the release of the Made in the Midlands 2017 Awards video which will follow the Awards ceremony in Birmingham on May 18. You can book tables at the event by clicking here.

Bangkok was the venue for our latest project with the world wide animal health company, Ceva Santé Animale.

Experts led the summit presentations.

The international convention VIV Asia 2017 was the backdrop for two major summits held by Ceva as part of their growing profile in Asia. Good Call Media’s Nik Wood acted as MC for the summits and led an on stage debate about the issue of antibiotic use in animals and humans.

The week began with Ceva’s Poultry Innovation Summit Asia and the Swine Innovation Summit Asia which were both held at the Centara Grand Hotel in Bangkok immediately before the VIV Asia convention. The summits were attended by Ceva customers and a series of expert speakers who highlighted issues around international demand from consumers and governments to reduce the use of antibiotics in humans and animals.

Bangkok provided the backdrop for the Ceva events.

Ceva CEO Dr Marc Prikazsky recently signed a new joint venture agreement in the presence of the Chinese Prime Minister, Li Keqiang and French Prime Minister, Bernard Cazeneuve. The agreement was signed in the Great Hall of the People, Beijing, China between Ceva and EBVAC, which is focused on the swine sector. China is by far the largest global producer of pork with half of the world’s pigs being raised in the country, underlining the importance of the new partnership for both companies.

Speaking about the Ceva summits, Ruud Aerdts, Ceva’s Asia Zone Director, said:”Growing resistance to antimicrobials is perhaps the greatest threat to all our lives and, as a result, in many Asian countries, the health authorities, livestock producers and other stakeholders are working hand in hand to address this threat by reducing the use of antibiotics in livestock production as much as possible.”

As part of the Edison Group’s offering, giving their clients greater exposure to the investor community, Good Call Media was asked to interview the CEO and President of International Life Science company Volition Rx (VNRX) about their financial results and performance in 2016. The company develop simple, easy-to-use blood based cancer tests to accurately diagnose a range of cancers. It was fascinating to learn that one day cancer could be detected as part of a routine blood test. This type of testing is still in its nascent stages but analysts believe the tests have great potential serving an unmet medical need.

Cameron Reynolds said “Volition had a year of remarkable success. We reached a series of significant clinical and operational milestones, enabling the Company’s transition into its commercial phase.”

To learn more about their financial results and the most recent product developments watch our video on Edison Investment TV or on Volition Rx’s website.

When leading UK manufacturer, Acorn Stairlifts, stepped in to save the iconic Wensleydale Flyer, they asked Good Call Media to help them tell the story of the campaign to save the iconic bus service.

See our video report on the story by clicking here.

The ‘Flyer’ operates on a route between Northallerton and Gayle in the world famous Yorkshire Dales National Park and is a lifeline for many local people including elderly residents who rely on the service to move around the Dales.

The company stepped in the save the bus.

When cutbacks in funding meant it faced termination, Acorn Stairlifts of Steeton near Bradford, agreed to top up a crowd funded campaign and allow the bus to carry on running for over a year. The company wanted to use our experience as TV journalists to explain the story.

Simon Webster of Acorn Stairlifts, which has been a winner of the Made in the UK business awards and was voted Yorkshire Post Exporter of the Year in 2016, said: “The problem was that the bus faced closing down and many people relied on the service. Our company ethos is to help people to get from A to B on a daily basis, whether it is up and down the stairs or using a rural bus route, the parallels were there and that’s why we stepped in.”

Acorn Stairlifts corporate branding

The importance of rural bus services in national parks was also highlighted by Sir Gary Verity, the Chief Executive of Welcome to Yorkshire and the man credited with masterminding the successful campaign to bring the Tour de France to Yorkshire in 2014 – a move that helped to make the Yorkshire Dales internationally famous.

Sir Gary Verity of Welcome to Yorkshire

“Rural economies and particularly upland rural economies like the Yorkshire Dales are pretty fragile economically,” said Sir Gary, who owns a remote sheep farm in Coverdale, close to the route of the Wensleydale Flyer, which has now been renamed the Acorn Wensleydale Flyer after Acorn’s intervention.
“Buses are often the threads that hold those national park economies together and allow people who don’t have access to a car to move around the parks,” he added.
Some campaigners have labelled the threat to rural transport as the ‘Beeching of the Buses’, claiming the threat is as potentially devastating as the plan developed by Dr. Richard Beeching that saw the UK’s railway network decimated in the 1960s.
Buses are overseen by the Department for Transport in England and the Welsh Assembly in Wales but decisions on funding for services are made by local authorities.