Member Article

Sky's the limit for Blood Bikes

Staff at pioneering roofing manufacturer Russell Roof Tiles have pulled out all the stops and raised an amazing £32,500 to help local vital services – close to its factories. Staff from Burton on Trent and Lochmaben have danced, hiked, run and quizzed their way to raising the cash.

Russell’s monies raised is being split equally between Shropshire.Staffordshire.Cheshire Blood Bikes and Dumfries and Galloway Blood Bikes. Both are volunteer-led, providing lifesaving medical supplies to NHS foundations, by transporting vital blood products, bone marrow, breast milk for premature babies and other life-critical supplies to local hospitals via motorbike, where every minute counts in helping seriously ill and injured patients.

This takes Russell’s total fundraising efforts for the blood bikes to £56,000 across 2016 and 2017. Last year generous Russell Roof Tiles 170 staff at its three sites and suppliers raised an impressive £24,000 – smashing the original £20,000 target and enabling both charities to buy a much-needed new motorbike each.

The money was raised by a wide range of fun and challenging fundraising activities. Most of the company’s 100 staff at its two Burton sites, on Wetmore Lane and Nicolson Way and its sister site in Lochmaben participated in some form or other. This included a gruelling 72-mile hike across Hadrian’s Wall, a ballroom dancing competition at Brewhouse Arts Centre “Dancing on the Tiles”, golfing activities and football matches.

For the first time a Big Quiz evening, hosted at the Pirelli Stadium in Burton raised a remarkable £8,550. The event was a triumph, and included 48 teams included members from Russell’s parent company Crown Global Equity travelling from Texas, Mexico and Florida who joined local staff, customers and suppliers.

Andrew Hayward, Managing Director at Russell Roof Tiles added: “I have been amazed and delighted to see the lengths that the staff have gone across all our three sites. I want to recognise the support of the families of our staff who have been a huge support, also so many of our suppliers and friends who have gone above and beyond this year. All to help these two amazing charities and their dedicated teams who work incredibly hard to provide a vital and lifesaving service.”

Both charities operate 24/7 on a totally voluntarily basis and does not receive any government or local authority finance.

Jeremy Cartwright, Chair of SSBB explained “We are totally dependent on donations and the goodwill of our volunteers to enable us to provide this important service to the NHS. We undertake over 5000 jobs a year covering over 200,000 miles which of course takes its toll on the bikes we use. This fantastic donation from Russell Roof Tiles will buy us a new bike and go a long way to help keep the service running. We are all extremely grateful to the staff of RRT for their tremendous and very creative efforts to raise this money for the charity.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Rebecca .