Business Diary: May 31

Mark and eleven members of the Aviva UK leadership team managed to raise more than £100,000 through a charity bike ride between the group’s two offices in York and Norwich.

The team cycled nearly 200 miles in the first Tour d’Aviva challenge.

The money raised will be shared between Railway Children, a leading UK and international charity which aims to help vulnerable young people living alone and at risk on the streets, and two employee-nominated regional charities, Martin House and Priscilla Bacon Lodge, which are located near Aviva’s life and general insurance businesses in York and Norwich.

Railway Children has been Aviva’s official partner charity since November 2009. During this time Aviva and its employees have donated in the region of £500,000 to the organi- sation.

All members of staff are given three days of paid leave each year to take part in community, charity and environmental activities. In 2010 Aviva workers spent 24,000 hours volunteering on important projects around the UK.

Mr Hodges said: “Corporate responsibility is hugely important at Aviva, so this year we wanted to step up to the mark quite literally and take on a task that would be both physically and mentally demanding.

“Our chosen charities do some amazing work across the UK and in Yorkshire and Norwich, so we’re determined to raise as much money as possible for these three great causes. Any donations will be very gratefully received.”

Shoppers are buying big on wages day

HAVE you experienced the pay day trolley dash?

If so, you are far from alone.

According to data compiled on behalf of Bradford-based supermarket chain Morrisons, the weekly ‘big shop’ is less common than you might think.

Instead, people are waiting for pay day and the chance to buy on a grand scale.

New figures from Morrisons show that the final weekend of the month sees a 52 per cent rise in bulk buy shopping for household essentials.

The products most likely to pile up in our trolleys on payday are toilet roll, toiletries and cleaning products, closely followed by frozen goods, with treats such as alcohol and sweets surprisingly lagging behind in the bulk buy chart.

This extra big monthly shop can take an average of 50 minutes and isn’t something to tackle alone – more than 60 per cent of those asked said they needed at least one extra pair of hands to cart their shopping home.

Richard Hodgson, the group commercial director at Morrisons, said: “The rise in the cost of living and our increasingly time-poor society has seen that people are shifting from big weekly shops, instead opting for one bulk buy, timed around pay day, supplemented with quick trips through the week during the rest of the month.”

EDS proves tower of strength for car ad

A SENSE of anticipation accompanied by dramatic music is usually reserved for Hollywood blockbuster film trailers but a car manufacturer has used the same techniques to produce a nail-biting internet film for its new vehicle with the help of a Yorkshire demolition firm.

Sheffield-based decomissioning firm EDS Group helped Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles with the production of an online film for its new Amarok pick-up which shows four of the vehicles pulling down a 200ft tower.

EDS is currently carrying out decommissioning works on the Berkshire Brewery in Reading, a project which included the removal of the huge tower.

It was approached by Volkswagen’s creative agency to see if they could work with them on the new launch.

Eldon Stevens, marketing development manager for EDS, said: “The chimney is almost as high as Westminster Abbey so we knew that it would have the wow factor for the film, it was just a case of working out the logistics.

“A chimney of this size would typically be pulled over with a 40-tonne excavator so the trucks were weighed down for added traction and fitted with quick-release mechanisms for the safety of the drivers.”

To view the advert, visit http://www.youtube.com/user/vwcommercialvehicles