Business boost with faster rural broadband

Sun Salads is a family business based near Holwell near Cranborne in Dorset that grows, packages and supplies watercress for retail, wholesale and processing from four farms in southern England and one in Spain.

Working across five locations the business has grown to supply supermarkets and the food service sector. With broadband speeds of 25 megabits per second (Mbps) downloads were often running overnight to keep up with numerous customer ordering systems. At busy times of the day the broadband connections speeds were so low they were unworkable.

With local supplier, Wessex Internet, Sun Salads were able to apply for a gigabit voucher to offset the cost of a full fibre connection to the business. Installed in May 2018 the improvement has already been dramatic.

Owner, Simon Lawes said: “We now enjoy reliable download speeds of up to 100 Mbps and are basking in the glow of a much faster broadband connection. Orders from customers open instantly in a click and our multi-site operation has easy access to our shared information. The option to upgrade to faster speeds in the future when we need them will be vital for our growing business.