The business year comes to a dramatic conclusion

September

Thomas Cook collapses into administration, putting 9,000 jobs at risk and a question mark over its high street stores in Kendal, Ulverston, Barrow, Whitehaven, Workington, Penrith and Carlisle.

HR advisors across Cumbria rally to support employees.

Independent travel agent Hayes Travel later agrees to take on all high street stores and their employees and reveals plans to create 1,500 more jobs.

Hi-tech LED manufacturer Oxley Group becomes one of the first to sign the Women in Defence Charter, which demands greater gender balance in the UK defence sector.

More than half of the company’s 200-strong workforce is female.

Global consultancy firm Jacobs expands its presence in Cumbria with a £460,000 investment in a new office at Barrow’s Trinity Enterprise Centre. Its clients include BAE Systems, ABP and Sellafield Ltd.

West Cumbria Mining snaps up the Haigh Colliery site at Kells, near Whitehaven, to use as its base to develop a £165m coking coal mine off the coast of St Bees, along with a processing plant on the former Marchon site.

The mine, which is expected to create 500 jobs, is later given the green light following a failed legal challenge, with work due to start early next year.

October

Cumbrian retail tycoon Philip Day loses his £5.7m investment in women’s fashion chain Bonmarche after its board calls in the administrators.

Mr Day – best known for owning Carlisle-headquartered Edinburgh Woollen Mill Group with a personal fortune of £1.2bn – had been buying up shares with the aim of taking over the struggling chain.

Mr Day does, however, return the following month as preferred bidder via his Peacocks business.

It is all smiles at Cumberland Estate Agents following a management buyout by the business’s managing director Graeme Mcleod.

The move will see the Cumberland Estate Agents network rebranded as a franchise of national estate agency chain Hunters, which backed the deal.

Barrow software company Miller Waite Ltd becomes the first beneficiary of the GSK Enterprise Fund.

The company receives £46,000 to aid its global expansion plans from a fund established to mitigate against the impact of job losses at the GSK site in Ulverston, still reeling from scrapped plans for a new £350m biopharmaceutical facility.

Keswick firm The Harrison Network becomes the latest SME to win a contact with Sellafield Ltd through its LINC scheme, delivering training programmes to help encourage innovative and entrepreneurial thinking at the nuclear giant.

Milk powder producer Kendal Nutricare emerges victorious after beating 2,700 entrants for the Chairman’s Selection Award at the prestigious European Business Awards 2019.

November

The founder of the Lake District Pound announces that the colourful currency designed to support independent businesses across the county is to fold at the end of January 2020.

More than 350 businesses, attractions and organisations adopted the current, which founder Ken Royall said had fallen victim to the rapid rise of contactless and mobile payments.

In a major blow to Barrow, household cleaning products firm McBride announces plans to shut its manufacturing facility in the town with a potential 106 jobs losses.

Business leaders and politicians react with shock at a move company bosses blame on the fall in demand for the laundry powders manufactured there.

Workers are currently being consulted on whether the site closes in the summer of 2020.

Tourism chiefs express high hopes that a new direct flight between Manchester Airport and Shanghai, will bring a further increase in Chinese visitors to the Lake District.

Operators who reported a surge in Chinese visitors after the launch of flights between Manchester and Beijing in 2016, hope the new link will bring hundreds of millions of pounds-worth of trade, investment and tourism benefits when they start in March 2020.

Cumbrian marine services firm James Fisher and Sons says there is no indication that personal or commercially sensitive data was lost during a cyber-attack, which bought down large parts of its network.

Egremont’s Toman Paving Ltd goes into administration, owing more than £1.5m to its creditors and leaving 155 companies, many local firms, out of pocket.

December

Isle of Man-based international investment firm DBAY Advisors wins the race to control Cumbrian-born logistics giant Eddie Stobart.

Shareholders vote through the deal by just over 80 per cent at a crunch meeting amid warnings that the iconic haulier faces going bust if the bid was not accepted.

The deal sees a romantic return for William Stobart – fourth child of founder Eddie – who will lead the company’s turnaround and kills off an alternative proposal floated by high-profile Cumbrian businessman and former Eddie Stobart chief executive Andrew Tinkler.

Stobart Group kicks off the search for a developer to create a new business park on 31 acres of prime industrial land at Carlisle Lake District Airport. Nearby, a contractor is appointed to deliver the Gateway 44 retail warehouse development, which will create around 100 jobs.

The Cumbria born chief executive of drug giant GSK will rub shoulders with business magnate Bill Gates after being appointed a non-executive director of digital behemoth Microsoft Corp.

Emma Walmsley, who grew up in Barrow, joins other big hitters on the board of the US headquartered company best known for its computer software, consumer electronics and personal computers.