Sustainability panel

Speaker profiles

PANELLIST: Sally Newall, Founder and Managing Director, Simply Ice Cream Our founder and owner, Sally Newall ran a catering business for over 25 years which was in fact the spring board for the leap into the ice cream business. Incredible feedback from happy event customers for her homemade ice cream led Sally to decide to move away from full time catering and concentrate on developing Simply Ice Cream into the successful, premium brand we are today. In keeping with our beliefs that simple, natural food tastes best, we have created a range of ice creams that are made using natural locally sourced ingredients (where possible), home-made flavours and free from additives or preservatives. Our Ice Cream is still made the old fashioned way, by hand, in small batches. We have developed over 30 delicious flavours of ice cream and sorbets, including our fantastic vegan range that’s made with a coconut milk base and a dog icecream launched in 2022. Supplying over 450 outlets across the South East across retail and hospitality next month we also launch in the Middle East.

Sustainability panel

CHAIR: Martin White, Founder and Director of Green Business www.greenbusinesshub.eco and the Biz Connect Radio Show –www.kentbizconnect.co.uk Our Green Business Hub business purpose can be defined simply as; Helping safeguard our environment through informing businesses and consumers and encouraging them to adopt more sustainable practices and choices.

We work with organisations in the public sector like KCC, to drive business engagement and uptake for their ‘sustainable’ business programmes. We are also helping private sector businesses understand their carbon footprint in order to develop a ‘Net Zero’ strategy, ‘green’ their supply chain and promote their accredited sustainable products and services in the marketplace.

Crucially, ‘Green Business Hub’ brings businesses and consumers who have a shared green or sustainability objective – either as buyer or supplier – together in one place to do business!

HEADLINE PANELLIST: Susan Elliott, Senior Manager, UK Network, South East at British Business Bank Susan is an experienced commercial professional working with British Business Bank stakeholders, intermediaries and delivery partners to help smaller business plan for and access finance for growth. Her knowledge and strong connections in the funding and business support community were gained from co-founding and running her own consulting business, providing strategic advice for scale ups, delivering business accelerator programmes, managing public sector business support contracts and through partnerships with sources of finance for small and mid-sized businesses.

PANELLIST: Paul Gannaway, Director Betteridge and Milsom (B&M) Paul Gannaway is Director of B&M, a thriving construction consultancy based in Canterbury.

With over 30 years in the industry, Paul has undertaken a wide variety of schemes in his career supporting various clients across the South East.

Paul’s career began at B&M at the age of 16. As his experience within the field broadened, he soon after qualified as a chartered quantity surveyor. Since his succession, the business continues to grow and expand.

Speaker profiles

B&M consists of a reputable team known to deliver an all-encompassing service from concept to reality providing services such as project management and quantity surveying. Their involvement has led to many notable projects such as home to the Kent and Medway Business Summit – Sibson building.

PANELLIST:Lisa Carlson, CEO, Canterbury Business Improvement District Lisa Carlson is CEO of the Canterbury Business Improvement District, leading multiple forums and working groups representing business interests across a range of topics from retail transformation, net zero, hospitality and evening & night time to inward investment, destination management and safety & security. Lisa represents the BID as a Board Director of the Canterbury Climate Action Partnership, and she Chairs Canterbury in Bloom and Canterbury’s Purple Flag Committee. Lisa is Chair of the Association of Town and City Management Board and appears regularly on local and regional television and radio. She is part of the High Streets Task Force Sector Leaders Group and regularly joins the All Party Parliamentary Group for Towns and City Centres.

PANELLIST:Josh Pitman – MD of Priory Direct Josh Pitman is the Managing Director of Priory Direct – the home of planet friendly packaging in the UK. Priory Direct supply sustainable packaging to over 21,000 businesses and tackle supply chain and operational challenges to reduce the impact of ecommerce on the environment.

Priory Direct’s ultimate goal is to make ecommerce a truly sustainably industry by driving awareness and action, through authentic and passionate advocacy, and access to solutions. This means creating an industry that truly contributes to society, the environment, and our economy, one challenge and customer at a time.