Harwood Park School, in Heywood, contacted frozen food sales and logistic company, Yearsley Group, to see if they could look round the cold store as part of their class project on hot and cold. Yearsley Group obliged, inviting teacher Helen Law and 20 Year 5 children to their boardroom for a presentation about the company. This was followed by a visit onto the loading bay where the children looked into a refrigerated vehicle and then watched the contents being unloading, temperature checked and moved into the cold store. The children followed the pallet's journey, being greeted with temperatures of -25 degrees once in the cold store: which at first they didn't think was that cold but after a few minutes they decided it definitely was!!
The children also looked at and handled some of the products sold by Yearsley Group's food sales division. They particularly liking pulling the legs off the squid and picking the icing off donuts - KIDS!!
The visit was completed with the burial of a Time Capsule in the grounds of Yearsley Groups £20m extension. The extension, which is being built by Russells Construction, is adjacent to the head office and will create the company's first "Superhub". It will have a total capacity of 40,000 pallet sites upon completion with 13,000 pallets sites available from May 2013 and the remainder completed and fitted out in line with future demand.
The Time Capsule burial was the finale of an eventful morning with the contents having been suggested by Yearsley Group employees and Harwood Park children. Almost 50 items were placed in the capsule including the day's newspaper, a supermarket till receipt, a photo of the school and school badge, some Yearsley literature, toys of the day and some "broken" phones and gaming equipment. The morning culminated in one of the children interrupting Managing Director, Harry Yearsley half way through his speech to ask "can we bury it yet".
The children were asked to do one last job as they left and that was to return in December 2062 to celebrate the opening of the capsule!
Afterwards, Harry Yearsley commented "Working with schools is just one way of building relationships with local people and is part of our commitment to keeping everyone informed about what's happening on their doorstep. While the children are probably too young to be discussing their future career choices, this visit has perhaps given them an early taster of the types of opportunities available to them in the future."