Boxing clever for rich harvest.

Food crisis upon food crisis has driven thousands of farmers to the wall - but the gloom had a silver lining for Les Evans.

Where cows once queued to be milked, there is now rack upon rack of box files stored for people who pay for the privilege.

The boxes do not require feeding or milking and Mr Evans no longer has to get out of bed at five every morning.

Box-It Central grew out of adversity, but the disastrous Easter flooding helped it grow from strength to strength as it was deluged with calls from businessfolk desperate to get records into safe, secure, dry storage.

The company's turnover exceeded Pounds 40,000 in its first year and is on course to more than double that in its second.

The success has earned it nominations for both the Evening Telegraph's Midland Bank-backed Small Business of the Year Award and the Innovation Award, sponsored by PowerGen.

With food safety scares plus plummeting land prices threatening to end a 60-year family tradition of farming 600 acres near junction 13 of the M40, Mr Evans was contemplating diversification when he hit on commercial file storage.

A major investment in refurbishing buildings and installing fire protection, security, humidity control and racking systems set him up in business custom-equipped space, almost half of which is already in use.

Clients include Calor and UT Automotive, the latter choosing Box-It Central to store the records from three factories they closed.

``We are succeeding because we go out and meet people,'' said Mr Evans. ``We show potential clients the advantages of turning their storage areas into productive workspace and offer to take their files away that day.

``If they need any back at a later date, we deliver them to their offices within a day of the call - and fetch them back without charge."