A DEESIDE business is marking the 10th anniversary of one of its products with a special gift to a hospice.
This month marks a decade of the launch of innovative access equipment developer, POP UP Products' one-person mobile access tower, the MI TOWER.
POP UP Products is celebrating by giving one of the mobile access towers to Claire House Children's Hospice, which has sites on the Wirral and in Liverpool.
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The hospice's head of estates, Richard Lunt, explained that the hospice was planning to replace first floor windows at its Wirral site.
He said he needed to organise the work for as low a price as possible but also with flexibility around the dates of the work to make sure no hospice visitors or their families were disturbed.
The hospice had found a local supplier to do the work but also needed scaffolding. Hiring the scaffolding was going to be costly because the hospice needed to keep the dates flexible. Therefore the hospice started to make enquiries about buying its own equipment.
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Richard said: "POP UP Products was recommended to us and it is within the area so I contacted them for prices. The sales director Ben Sly came back to us and offered the tower as a donation to the hospice.
"It was amazing. There were literally tears in my eyes when he told me. It was a really great moment to know that there are some really good people out there.
"This donation means the money we would have used on the scaffolding can now be spent across our two sites. It has saved us a significant amount of money."
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He explained the tower was easily stored on a compact trolley which meant it could be used at both the Wirral and Liverpool buildings for other maintenance work.
POP UP Products is also providing industry standard training for the staff to use the equipment as part of the donation.
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POP UP Products sales director Ben Sly said the company had been delighted to help the hospice by gifting the tower.
He added: "It was a way that we could make a significant contribution to a really important local charity. The query from Richard came just as we were thinking about how to mark the 10th anniversary of the MI TOWER, so it all seemed to fall into place.
"We hope it will be a really flexible and useful piece of equipment and continue to save money for the hospice into the future."
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