Fiona Cairns
The Leicestershire-based cake producer that made the wedding cake for the Prince and Princess of Wales is pulling out all the stops for the coronation of King Charles III.
For their 2011 wedding, Prince William and Princess Kate turned to Fiona Cairns for their eight-tier iced fruit cake, which was finished with intricate white icing and decorated with up to 900 delicate sugar-paste flowers.
Equally exquisite are her crown-shaped cookies sprayed with luxe gold paint and fairy cakes decorated with delicate bunting, crowns and a coronation printed sugar disk in the British red, white and blue colourways.
“Thousands of tiny intricate golden crowns, union jacks and bunting - all handcrafted as always to adorn our ever-popular fairy cakes. All in preparation for the big Coronation Weekend,” she posted on Instagram.
Fiona Cairns is a luxury bakery brand that designs and makes cakes for all occasions. Apart from the Royal Family, the producer supplies cakes and biscuits to high-end retailers including Waitrose, Harrods, Fortnum and Mason and Selfridges. It also exports to Dunnes Stores in Ireland.
The family business was founded almost 40 years ago by the former pastry chef and her husband, and today, boasts a 120-strong workforce.
The company is now focussing on introducing sustainable initiatives that will help it remain resilient and become more cost effective while having a minimal impact on the planet.
To support its green ambitions, it secured funding from Lloyds Bank’s Clean Growth Financing Initiative to install 4,500 square feet of solar panels to one of its three production units.
The panels will supply almost a third of the building’s energy (around 10% of the company’s total energy usage), reducing CO2 emissions by 15 tonnes per year. The business – which recently became RSPO certified – uses its food waste is used to help generate electricity, with the aim to send zero waste to landfill. Further plans are also in the pipeline to install solar panels across all three production sites, with the hope that renewable energy will be the dominant energy source in the future.
“Sustainability is something I’ve been passionate about for a long time, and as the next generation of leadership, it’s important to look at all areas of the business to see where we can reduce our impact on the environment,” said Tara Patel, second-generation owner and director at Fiona Cairns.
“The installation of our solar panels forms just one part of our sustainability journey, and when combined, these changes are helping us to bring down the emissions of our business.
“Retailers are increasingly scrutinising the emissions of their suppliers. As a partner to some of the UK’s most prominent retailers, it’s our responsibility to ensure we’re operating as sustainably as possible, helping them to achieve their net zero ambitions, as well as our own.”