7:00pm Saturday 4th September 2010
By Tyrone Marshall
A POPULAR garden centre is to be given a new lease of life after being bought out from the receivers.
The Woodthorpe Hall Group plan to invest over £500,000 in Towneley Garden Centre, in Deerpark Road, over the next 12 months.
And the group, which also owns four garden centres in Lincolnshire, East Yorkshire and Cleveland, plan to double the workforce from 20 to 40.
Phillipa Nickson, general manager of the Woodthorpe Hall Group, said that the firm believed that the centre had “tremendous potential for development”.
“We are delighted to have acquired Towneley Garden Centre,” she said.
“We feel that it has tremendous potential for development and we will be making a substantial investment in the centre to increase its ranges and its facilities.
“The group’s ongoing expansion gives us increased retail stock buying power, and this enables us to pass on to our customers the savings we achieve.
"Towneley is our first garden centre in the North West and we hope to acquire a further five centres in the North and Midlands during the next five years to bring our total to 10.”
The centre closed in January to undergo refurbishment after it suffered extensive flood dam-age last October.
The Woodthorpe Hall Group began trading 20 years ago when it opened Woodthorpe Hall Garden Centre near Alford in Lincolnshire.
Ten years ago the group bought Brigg Garden Centre in Lincolnshire and in 2008 they acquired Arcadia Garden Centre, near Middlesbrough.
Last year it purchased Spring Garden Centre at Sigglesthorne in East Yorkshire.
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