Today is the 65^th anniversary of the establishment of the Covent Garden Market Act 1961, which founded the Covent Garden Market Authority (CGMA) and transferred responsibility for managing the market from the previous private company structure to a statutory public authority. It provided the framework for regulating the market and its wholesale horticultural activities.

It also laid the foundations for a second Covent Garden Market Act, established in 1966, which enabled the relocation of the market from its historic central London site to Nine Elms and protected the future of the site it still occupies today as a wholesale horticultural market.

A lot of water has passed under London’s bridges since New Covent Garden crossed the river in 1974. The market and its tenants have evolved, adapted and shifted their focus to meet the changing demands of their supplier and customer bases. NCGM remains the largest wholesale market in the UK; this year’s Best British Wholesale Market, and it has an unmatchable location, less than two miles from the centre of London.

It’s nice to reach an anniversary hot on the heels of announcing yet another market milestone – the first financial year in which the combined turnover of the tenant community has topped £1 billion. Click here to watch a film first published on Beanstalk Global following the announcement, which sees CGMA Chair Wanda Goldwag OBE outlining a vision for the future.

We’re two years away from completing a complex, but potentially game-changing redevelopment of the site, which we hope lays the foundations for many more decades of success for New Covent Garden Market, its people and, of course, everyone who supplies or buys from the site.