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Garden Centres Raises More Than £100K For Martin House Children’s Hospice



Yorkshire Garden Centres has reached a major fundraising milestone after raising more than £106,000 for Martin House Children’s Hospice since the partnership began in April 2025.


Across its seven branches, colleagues and customers have thrown themselves behind the partnership, from bake sales and raffles to running, cycling and dragon boat racing. Each branch has its own charity champion and fundraising target, while the Pennies initiative gives customers the option to add 25p to their purchase at the checkout.


Staff have taken on individual challenges, including Dry January and the Great North Run, while CEO Mark Farnsworth has organised and joined cycling challenges. Colleagues also entered two sunflower-themed teams into Martin House’s Dragon Boat Race and took part in an in-store spinathon, cycling the equivalent distance from their stores to the hospice.


Last year, the company played a major part in Martin House’s 36-hour giving challenge for THE BUILD, raising more than £7,000.


Support has gone beyond fundraising too. Staff have donated items to Martin House’s retail team, contributed prizes to the Glitter Ball auction and donated Lego to the hospice. The company has also provided table centres for Martin House Ladies’ Lunches and welcomed children and families to Christmas events and the opening of its Otley Grass Hopper play centre. The partnership will run until June 2027.


Mark Farnsworth, CEO of Yorkshire Garden Centres, said:

“Reaching more than £100,000 is a fantastic milestone and is down to the enthusiasm of our colleagues, customers and charity champions across all seven of our centres.”

“Martin House does incredible work for children and families across Yorkshire, and our teams have really embraced the partnership. Whether it’s taking on a personal challenge, jumping into a dragon boat or simply asking customers to add 25p at the till, everyone has found their own way to get involved.”


“We’re incredibly proud of what we’ve achieved together so far and look forward to continuing our support.”


Hannah Finan, Partnership Manager at Martin House, said:

“We’re hugely grateful to everyone at Yorkshire Garden Centres for reaching this incredible milestone. What makes the partnership so special is the sheer variety of ways their teams have chosen to support us. From major fundraising challenges to donations, events and welcoming the families we support, their commitment has reached right across Martin House."

“More than £106,000 is an amazing achievement and will make a real difference to the children, young people and families who rely on our care.”


Each year, Martin House supports more than 550 children and young people with life-shortening conditions, and their families, across West, North and East Yorkshire.


Its specialist teams provide care at the hospice in Boston Spa, in hospitals and in families’ own homes, including planned short breaks, symptom management, emergency care and end-of-life care.


Providing this specialist care costs Martin House around £13 million every year, with the majority coming from voluntary donations and fundraising.


For further information about Martin House Children's Hospice and how to support it, visit here.

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A process filter manufacturer has begun a record year of industry exhibition activity as it eyes global trading opportunities on its fortieth anniversary.


Surrey-based Amazon Filters is targeting international showcases here in the UK and in New York, Kuala Lumpur and Warsaw. They reflect the firm’s core markets of pharmaceutical, healthcare, municipal water treatment, renewable energy and oil and gas production.


Founded in 1985, Amazon Filters makes and supplies a wide range of filter vessels and housings for critical liquid and gas applications in process industries worldwide.


A presence at business-to-business conferences and exhibitions has steadily helped the firm raise its profile and strengthen reach among customers across a growing list of sales territories.


Neil Pizzey, Managing Director, said:

“We’ve recently put great store both on capital investments at our UK fabrication facility and in recruiting new staff, partners and distributors in territories where we are pursuing growth."

“This year, our fortieth, we are keen to do more than ever to demonstrate how our ‘quick and able’ manufacturing and export capacity supports multi-sector involvement and activity.”


The firm’s exhibition presence kicks off at the international green energy event Hydrogen Live in Liverpool on 5 to 6 February 2025.


Dedicated to ‘uniting the hydrogen value chain and accelerating the hydrogen economy’, the event is a prime opportunity for Amazon Filters engineers to highlight the benefits of their liquid and gas filtration solutions for mission-critical electrolysis technology.


Three dedicated pharmaceutical industry events follow: InterPhex in New York on 1 to 3 April; Making Pharma in Coventry on 29 to 30 April; and the ISPE Europe Annual Conference in London from 12 to 14 May.


InterPhex, at the Jacob Javits Convention Center in Manhattan, aims to provide a comprehensive overview of global advances in pharmaceutical and biotech especially process development and regulatory compliance.


Making Pharma, at the Coventry Building Society Arena, covers all aspects of the pharmaceutical supply chain. Themes this year include sustainability, audit and compliance and the application of AI and machine learning.


ISPE, the International Society for Pharmaceutical Engineering, is this year holding its annual conference at the Novotel London West in Hammersmith. It will enable the Amazon Filters team to meet with senior executives in drug manufacturing, the supply chain and global regulatory agencies.


Amazon Filters’ recently appointed Market Manager - Pharmaceutical & Healthcare, Mafalda Silva, who will attend all three pharmaceutical events, said:

“Our presence at these industry conferences and exhibitions is a key element of our targeted international sales plan to accelerate market development and growth while working closely with colleagues, distributors, resale partners and customers.”

The start of April will also see filtration experts from the firm’s Polish manufacturing base exhibit products at the giant Warsaw trade fair, FiltraTec.


Around 7,000 visitors are expected from 15 countries, representing a wide range of filtration processes including water treatment, energy production and chemicals and pharmaceutical manufacturing.


The Amazon Filters team will discuss how their research and development partnership with the Faculty of Chemical and Process Engineering at the Warsaw University of Technology underpins product development in various sectors.


FiltraTec takes place on 1 to 3 April at the PTAK Warsaw Expo.


On 5 June the focus is on the UK water industry with product exhibitions at the Drinking Water Quality Conference at Birmingham’s National Conference Centre.


Attendees include representatives from all the major water companies and their supply chain partners.


In Malaysia, on 2 to 4 September, Amazon Filters will exhibit at this year’s Oil & Gas Asia (OGA), taking place at the Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre and aimed at decision makers in the oil, gas, energy and petrochemicals sectors.


Members of Amazon Filters’ Kuala Lumpur-based sales team, Mohamed Nizam Mohamed Hanifa and Muhamad Syakir Samsudin, will be exhibiting products in association with industry partner and offshore drilling contractor Diamond Offshore.


Fazli Ibrahim, Diamond Offshore’s Malaysian-based Chief Executive, said: “We look forward to joining forces with Amazon Filters at OGA to highlight the benefits of innovative, energy-efficient filtration solutions for efficiency, performance and sustainability across upstream, midstream and downstream processes.”

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