Frozen food firm founders nine months after award

Wensleydale Foods has folded because banking giant HSBC withdrew financial support for the fledgling Yorkshire Dales food manufacturer just months after awarding it a national business start-up award.

The frozen ready meals business, which employed five staff, has now gone into administration. Owner Elizabeth Guy said: "It really is ironic. Last October I was at HSBC's Start-Up Stars award ceremony at the Savoy Hotel in London and nine months later it has effectively pulled the plug on the business. I am hugely disappointed and sad."

She said: "I have to say, however, the bank went as far as it could for us, especially at a local level, and I suppose in the end it had no choice. The business was set up on a shoestring and I didn't have enough capital to keep going."

Guy founded the company two years ago after she began to make healthy pies and puddings for children in the kitchen of her home in Askrigg, Upper Wensleydale.

By November 2006, she was producing meals flat out in a customised factory unit for 40 Waitrose stores and 70 independent outlets. She had just begun selling to the north west supermarket chain Booths.

HSBC declined to comment.