Students at Cumbria’s Newton Rigg College are getting smart thanks to a donation from leading supporter Carrs Billington.

The agricultural supplier has a long-time relationship with the Penrith college and supports students through a range of initiatives including loaning high-tech farming machinery to give them hands-on experience in their studies.

In recent years, the firm has supplied students with boiler suits; this year, the agricultural and agricultural engineering students are wearing branded hoodies.

Daniel Stamper, the college’s programme manager for agriculture: “They look very smart and are very popular.

“We’re grateful for all the support we receive throughout the year from Carr’s Group and Carrs Billington. These are expensive courses to run and we couldn’t do it without the backing we receive from industry.”

The company has also arranged tractors, a cattle crush and quad bikes to aid students in their one-year and two-year courses.

The students, who come from across the north of England, will often return to work on family farms, begin roles in herd and farm management or take up higher education studies.

The hoodies were presented to the first-year students by Carr’s Group chief executive Tim Davies. He and Ian Powley, Carrs Billington’s commercial manager in Cumbria, also outlined career prospects with the group.

Ian said: “A lot of our staff were trained at Newton Rigg. The campus farm is a long-time customer and we’ve worked together on many educational initiatives over the years. We’re very proud of that association.”

Carrs Billington Agriculture is a leading supplier of agricultural products.

It operates compound feed mills at Carlisle, Lancaster and Stone, and has blend plants at Kirkbride in Cumbria, at Lancaster and in Wales. It has 32 Country Stores throughout northern England, Scotland and Wales, several of which have machinery sales departments and fuel distribution depots.