HOME CANNING

[kizzie]

Thank you. Will go and look.

[m0tty]

Hi all,

Sorry for not keeping you all informed, but I have some great news to share. As some of you already know, I'm currently looking into sourcing all items related to the craft of home canning and other methods of food preservation/storage. Last week I approached Presto, who make pressure canners but are located in the States, if that they would consider shipping their canning products to me, ( in other words deal with me as they do with there own trade customers in the States.), and got an encouraging reply back as follows:-

Dear Mr. Spence,

Thank you for your interest in Presto Pressure Cookers and Accessories, and for bringing the opportunities in the UK to our attention! I have recently come on board at Presto to help develop sales in the international markets, so I believe the timing of the growing interest in food canning and preservation in the UK is right in line with Presto's ability to begin to support sales outside of the USA. Please see copies of our product specification sheets for canners and accessories attached for reference.

The main doubt we have about selling our product to the UK is in regard to any product certifications required. For example, we have UL (Underwriter's Laboratory - independent consumer safety agency) listing required on all of our products in the USA. We do have a customer in Australia that purchases all of our canners and accessories, and does not require any further certification to import and sell there. However, the EU requires CE, and in some cases, additional country certification, which we do not currently have. We have found requirements for these types of consumer products regarding certification to be a bit different in every country. Please let me know what is specifically required on this product to properly import and sell to consumers in the UK.

So, as you can see, I just need to research on Presto's behalf, any extra certification needed, so that they can begin supplying me. The upshot being, we may be able to offer the canners at a realistic price, depending on what the supply cost to us is, of course.

Well......... this thing as grown into something much bigger, so now we, (me & my family), are going to go the full hog and open up an e-commerce store. We have enrolled onto the Governments SME'S start up program, where we will learn the full ins' & outs' of running a business, fill in the business plan, and then apply for funding via grants, enterprise allowance and/or business start up loans as the case may be.

During my absence, I took the opportunity to contact other suppliers, over the pond, inc. Norpro, Ball Mason and Mrs Wages food & pickle ingredients. All have shown a keen interest in our endeavour, and are just waiting for me to contact them, when we become a business entity and are trading.

My aim is to provide the best service, best price and best support to our future customers, and in doing so, helping to create a market place where canning supplies and prepper supplies are mainly on a par here as they are in the states. I'm willing to keep prices low, by making profits on volume sold rather than one big kill each sale, as we have right now obtaining canning supplies.

I have a few ideas/designs in the pipeline, that could benefit the prepper community, so to this end, maybe we could set up a product testing page on here, where you the actual prepper can put some of these products to the test and report the findings there.

Maybe now might be the best time for an admin to pm me, as I would like to setup a donation system where a sale generated through this forum could pay a donation to the running costs, as well as offering a discount to the purchaser by being a member of this forum. Do you have a system like this already in operation? Please advise.

Just before I close, i understand that some of you may think it's all pie in the sky, well it is until it happens, but i cannot stress the amount of research, emailing, phone calls & appointments we have had as well as encouragement from the canning/prepper retailers we have contacted, so we are deadly serious in our efforts.

We will be looking at eventually, stocking all the canning equipment and the crafts' sundries, other food storage methods such as mylar bags all sizes, vacuum bag rolls all sizes, oxygen absorbers all sizes, moisture absorbers all sizes, dehydrators, vacuum sealers, vacuum sealer attachments, food storage stacking systems, also recycled drums of various sizes repurposed from food companies, and also, at some stage further down the line, stocking own brand freeze dried veg/meat/fruit in the quantities like they do in the states, so essentially being able to order pre-packed food in different quantity/package sizes. I have an established contact with a food company that deals in this kind of food product, so i expect no difficulty here, other than the supplied price being to high when it comes to the time of negotiation. Also we will stock bulk buy 15/20/25kg sacks/bags of rice, wheat grain, flour etc.

Obviously this won't be achieved overnight, but this gives you all a good indication of what we will aim to achieve in the fullness of time.
I would really appreciate it, if anyone as an idea of a product that needs to be included or if you need to ask anything/suggest something, post here or pm me no problem.
Right now, as it stands, our web-store address will be http://www.thehomecanningcentre.com ( domain name as been reserved) and once on the site the tile will be ( in fancy design ) "The Home Canning & Food Storage Centre"

Thanks all for your patience, all the best,

Daz

[Decaff]

Fantastic!!! Well done to you all!! I will definately be ordering a pressure canner!!

I would also like to see good quality oil lamps as they are hugely expensive over here yet not over there, I know there is an Amish store that have hundreds of them along with many other non electrical goods for "Plain living" I would order a few of the oil lamps but they don't ship to UK... yet!

[FEISTY]

I think this is a great idea (I'm sure one most of us have considered, so congrats for actually getting it off the ground). There are so many things we should be able to get hold of at a lesser cost. My only concern is that, if we order as "UK-Preppers" (to benefit the site), you will have a comprehensive list of names, addresses, etc, which goes against our op-sec priorities. I would certainly be happy to have knowledge of the business, but wouldn't necessarily identify myself as a UK-Prepper customer.

[m0tty]

Hi Decaf & Feisty Thank you for your valuable input

@ Decaff, most definitely will look into this. I have seen their version of the oil lamp you refer to, and they are of a better quality than the Chinese mass produced version, so well worth the money. I will also look into the oil as well, as I've found this can be quite expensive too.

@ Feisty, you raise an important issue here, and one closest to my heart, so I can well understand. we can't escape the issue of having to supply a delivery address at the point of sale. I'm currently working with Andy Clegg of Absolute Web Design Ltd who will be developing our web-store, I will point out this issue and see if we can keep it as anonymous as we can, but like any business, there will be the copy paper invoice of the sale for tax purposes which cannot be avoided. I will give my guarantee that I will uphold the data protection act to the letter, I am a prepper also first and foremost, and will protect our customers with the strictest of confidentiality. Offering the discount, I'm thinking, would be by voucher code, only obtainable from this forum, and the system will recognise this and apply the donation to the forum at the same time, and, although this would be noted on the invoice, the same data protection applies, with the strictest of confidentiality first and every time.

If any of you have a suggestion on this issue, fire away, as I believe this is the most sensitive issue to our way of life, raised by Feisty, that we all worry about, but I can only say again with maximum emphasis, that we will protect all of our customers' sensitive information with the strictest of confidentiality. Thank you Feisty for this.

[Hamradioop]

EU legislation on CE-marking: Pressure Equipment

http://www.cbi.eu/system/files/marketin ... CE_PED.pdf

hope this is of help

[kizzie]

Everything crossed that it takes off.

[m0tty]

@ Hamradioop,

thanks for this my fellow ham, lol this will save me some time, although I will still check with trading standards Monday, just to double check if any extra rules or regs. apply, but I suspect that as long as they meet the CE standard then all should be fine.

All the best

Daz

[m0tty]

@ Kizzie,

thank you very much Kizzie, so do we

All the best.

Daz

[Ragdolly]

It was this thread hat stopped my "lurking" and caused me to seek admission

It so great to see someone in the UK doing something that will also benefit others with the e store. I get frustrated when I find something on amazon and it's dirt cheap only to find I'm redirected to the Canadian site and the thing is three times the price!

Off topic! I'm making pickles later today but my last masterpiece of canning was chocolate cherry preserve. Mmmmm

I can A LOT. Lol