Ben and Stephen discuss Wales' top owner-managed businesses, funding for a cricket centre and new padel facilities.
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00:00Wales' top owner-managed businesses, funding for a new cricket centre and new
00:04Paddell facilities feature in today's business briefing.
00:12I'm Stephen Farrell. I'm Ben Butler. Starting us off today Ben, I believe
00:16you've got one of Insider's lists to talk to us about. Yep, so we've got the top
00:21100 owner-managed businesses in Wales in the latest June-July edition of the
00:27Wales Business Insider magazine and it features a discount supermarket, a video
00:33game distributor and online sports retailer. So at number one on the list
00:40we've got Deeside-based supermarket giant Iceland, which obviously we're all
00:44familiar with from our various frozen food. So that posted a turnover of just
00:48under four billion pounds for the year ended March 2023. And making up the top
00:53five, we've got Bridgend headquartered motor dealer Sinclair Motors, Neaf firm
00:58Bailey Investments, Cumbam-based Mon Motors and also forecourt operator
01:03Ascona, which is located in Pembrokeshire. They round up the top five and other
01:07prominent firms include at number 24 Swansea-based Curveball Leisure, quite an
01:13interesting area, video game distributor. It's grown to become one of Europe's
01:18largest in fact and we've also got Wrexham-based Netwilled Sports. Last year
01:25the company opened a new £25 million, 411,000 square feet
01:30headquarters in Wrexham and it sells equipment for a wide range of sports in
01:35a hundred countries. So it's a major firm there. So to check out the
01:40full top 100 you can pick up a copy of the June-July edition of Wales
01:47Business Insider. Always interesting to see those ones.
01:51Yes absolutely. So up in Yorkshire today we've got news of a new cricket
01:56facility. Sixers Cricket is opening a new centre in Huddersfield, an indoor
02:01training centre there, having secured some funding from HSBC to develop that.
02:06So the 8,000 square foot property is currently being fitted out. It will
02:10feature five indoor cricket lanes as well as bowling machines and the idea is
02:15it's going to bring high-quality coaching to the area and help make the
02:18sport more accessible to people in the West Yorkshire region. Sixers Cricket
02:22has also said it's going to help them improve their own services and hopefully
02:26grow turnover as well, as well as creating some jobs once the facility is
02:30open. So it's a good time to be looking at launching it. Yes, it's a good time to play some of the sport.
02:35And we're sticking with sport for the rest of the video as well I believe.
02:38Yes absolutely. So we've got quite an interesting one here. I'm planning to run you
02:42Padel Tennis Court in Bath that looks set to be given the green light by Bath
02:47and North East Somerset Council's planning committee on Wednesday. It's
02:53amid a worldwide rapid expansion in the sports popularity. So the application has
02:58been submitted for the replacement of an existing tennis court with two Padel
03:03tennis courts at Lansden Lawn Tennis and Squash Rackets Club. That's at
03:08Northfield and it was founded in 1882 so quite a lot of history there. And the
03:14application comes amid, as I've already mentioned, a booming popularity for the
03:18sport and including new facilities being provided throughout the UK. In
03:24terms of, just so our readers know exactly what Padel Tennis is, it's a racket
03:30sport which is played on an enclosed court. So it's about a third of the size
03:33of a tennis court so a little bit smaller. The rules also are very similar
03:38to tennis and it's played with the same or similar balls. But a difference in
03:42terms of the serving is it's underarm serving as opposed to overarm and you've
03:47got a squash-like part of the game as well where you could actually use walls
03:51as well which are part of the game. The scoring also is the same as tennis so
03:58yeah, anyone who wants to try out Padel Tennis then yeah, it's there for them.
04:04Yeah, I mean we've mentioned various Padel ventures over the last few weeks and
04:08then we have another one today in addition to your
04:12one. We've had a new venue opening up in Cheshire. The Hook Club has
04:16opened at Mottram Hall. So there's been a £400,000 investment there to get
04:21that set up. It's been developed by a company called UK Padel
04:25Courts and the idea is to create these new facilities and provide some
04:31coaching on professional standard courts. So you've got three courts there and
04:36the company said they want to create a new landmark destination for the
04:40sport in Cheshire. So yeah, a really exciting venue there.
04:44And that follows on from last week where I believe there was a facility in Yorkshire as well.
04:48Yeah, so they're really springing up all over the place at the moment. Really exciting to see.
04:51We may have to try it ourselves. Yeah, I think we're going to go.
04:55For more on those stories you can visit InsiderMedia.com.
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05:01Thank you for watching. Thank you.