BUSINESSMAN Jim Wilkinson is celebrating this week after winning a Good Food Award.

From his base at Glenfield Park on the Lomeshaye Industrial Estate, Nelson, Jim distributes the Good Grips range of kitchen tools.

The American-made products are designed for elderly people, arthritis sufferers or people who have problems gripping cooking utensils.

They have won dozens of awards including the latest Good Food Award for Best Equipment Innovation. Jim oversees their distribution to department stores, cookshops, mail order outlets and supermarkets. He said: "The Good Food Award is really good news for us and is helping to put East Lancashire on the map. "The products are proving to be really successful and are growing in popularity all the time, so we are delighted to be the sole UK distributors."

Good Grip products include peelers, garlic presses, tin openers, jar and bottle openers and ice cream scoops.

They were invented in America by arthritis sufferer Betsy Farber when she realised she was having difficulty using kitchen utensils with small, hard handles.

Jim explained: "The grip is larger than usual and made from a material called Santoprene, which was developed during the American space programme."

They are non-slip and and also have fingerprint soft-spots which adjust to individual grips.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.