Balmoral Show 2025
As part of out commitment to support businesses to grow, Council is once again giving local food and drink producers and food and drink experience businesses, the opportunity to exhibit on Council’s stand space in the NI Food Pavilion at Balmoral Show.
Balmoral Show is Northern Ireland’s largest agri-food event, offering visitors the opportunity to meet local producers and learn about the food journey form field to fork.
The NI Food Pavilion, managed by Food NI, is always filled to capacity with top tier artisan food producers.
Why apply?
The 2024 event saw well over 100,000 attendees from UK and Ireland.
It is the ideal platform for local food and drink producers and/or food and drink experiences to:
- Gain access a large consumer market
- Low-risk way to trial out exhibiting at an event of this scale
- Engage with potential new customers for future sales or even just for candid feedback
- Promote an online shop for future repeat sales
- Increase brand awareness (including online presence/following)
- Meet industry buyers
- Self-development (gain experience in exhibiting as this scale, network with peers and fellow producers)
Whilst there is no guarantee of large volumes of on-the-day sales, this is a great platform to generate longer term impact.
Criteria for Council Supported and Producer Group Showcases
This opportunity is open to businesses with up to 10 employees (10 employees or less) and have a maximum annual turnover of up to £500,000 (less than £500,000).
- Must be producing the product(s) in Northern Ireland using local ingredients where available
- Must showcase high quality Northern Ireland food and drink produce
- Must source, use and promote Northern Ireland ingredients
In addition, you must have
- Environmental Health Registration
- Environmental Health Hygiene Rating of 4 or above
- For alcohol companies to sell alcohol in the pavilion, for offsite consumption, the following criteria must be met:
- You must have been granted a licence to sell alcohol drinks from the courts and this licence must be a category 5(1)(m) local producer’s licence; and
- You must have received written approval from a Senior Police Officer allowing you to sell at the event.
- Requests to the PSNI must be made in writing at least 2 weeks before the show and should be sent to District Commander for Lisburn and Castlereagh: LisburnCastlereaghsecretariat@psni.police.uk
Cost
£150 per day
Benefits of attending with Council
Participation package includes:
- Exhibitors pass & Car Park pass
- Shared space on a 6x3m stand within a prominent position in the NI Food Pavilion (2025 stand is located directly behind Food Demonstrations/Theatre to benefit from the footfall this area generates)
- One 500W double electrical socket
- Use of communal store, use of communal hand washing and light equipment washing area
- FREE 1:1 mentoring specifically to support you to develop a strategy for exhibiting at this event and help you to fully capitalise on the opportunity before and after.
- Promotion of participation pre, during and post exhibition via Council’s PR and Food NI media.
Expression of Interest (EOI)
In a bid to ensure we can make the stand as accommodating as possible this year, we are calling eligible businesses to complete of an EOI prior to full application which is expected to launch early January 2025.
This is to allow us to determine level of interest from businesses and on what basis, and gives us a chance to contact you based on your response to further discuss any queries.
Please complete the EOI online using SurveyMonkey.
Closing date for Expressions of Interest is 12noon Monday 16 December 2024.