Hotel Chocolat said it saw a surge in online sales prior to Easter but this failed to fully offset the shutting of its shops in the face of coronavirus.

The chocolate shop business said it has been encouraged by the "agility and resilience" of its business model and is continuing to explore further avenues for online sales growth.

Hotel Chocolat shut all its retail stores on March 23 after the Government-mandated lockdown was introduced, with non-essential retailers told to shut up shop.

Angus Thirlwell, co-founder and chief executive of the company, said "plans are in progress" for the retailer to reopen its stores "when appropriate, with adjustments in place to make shopping with us safe and pleasurable again".

READ MORE: Monday Interview: Lockdown forces Scots food and drink to swap expansion for survival

The firm said that closing its stores in March has had a "material impact" on trading and the company has therefore undertaken a "broad range of actions to manage its costs and cash flow".

The retailer provided the trading update as it revealed it has secured a new £35 million loan with Lloyds Bank to strengthen its finances.

Hotel Chocolat said the facility will replace a £10 million overdraft facility it had with the bank.

In March, the chocolatier secured £22 million from an equity fundraiser to fund capital investment and provide financial headroom.

Mr Thirlwell said: "The financial headroom gives us greater resilience against ongoing disruption and enables us to move onwards with longer-term growth opportunities.

"Our market leadership in digital and subscription chocolate is more valuable than ever and we will accelerate the planned innovations and investments behind these models.

"Every day at Easter the online demand exceeded the quantity of orders we could accept, due to the requirements to ensure safe working, combined with the short adjustment period.

"With the plans we are putting in place over the next months, we aim to be able to switch the vast majority of demand to online should the need arise in the future."

A group of volunteers have given up their time and equipment to produce more than 20,000 face shields for health workers as part of an initiative started by engineering enthusiasts.

The Shield Force project in Edinburgh has been designing and making personal protective equipment (PPE) to donate to hospitals during the coronavirus crisis.

What started with a handful of product design professionals using their 3D printers to help fight Covid-19 has led to a pop-up factory with more than 200 people helping out.

READ MORE: Marks & Spencer to permanently overhaul shopping

Based at Summerhall, they have raised more than £33,000 to help produce the kit, with help from University of Edinburgh students, academics and other volunteers.

Costa Talalaev said NHS staff had been grateful to receive their equipment.

He told the PA news agency: "We thought about what we could realistically do - ventilators were too complex to produce.

"We came up with the idea of face shields."

Mr Talalaev is the director of a prototyping company called Maker-Bee and he was able to repurpose some of his 3D printers to produce the face shields.

He said interest in the project grew quickly: "In the first week we had about five people, then we went to 15 people, two weeks later we had 45 people or so, with 15 people essentially working full time.

"Now we have about 200 contributors overall and we're looking into making new things."

More than 1,000 face shields are now being produced each day while the total number of deliveries has passed 22,000.

They now plan to create other items of PPE, including a gown for medics to use.
Mr Talalaev has designed a hook which can be used for opening doors, connected to a bottle of disinfectant so it can be cleaned easily.

Designs for the face shields were refined over time as Shield Force received feedback from medics.

Their products will soon be distributed to people outside the health service who deal with large numbers of people, such as shop workers.

They are continuing to raise money for the project through a crowdfunding page.

The UK accounting regulator has revealed it has opened an investigation into EY over its audit of troubled healthcare firm NMC Health, which tumbled into administration last month.

The Financial Reporting Council (FRC) said it launched the investigation into the audit of NMC last month.

READ MORE: Scottish plc profit warnings highest on record

NMC was listed on the FTSE 100 until earlier this year, when it saw its shares suspended following allegations of a deepening accounting scandal.

In a brief statement, the FRC said: "On April 15 the Financial Reporting Council opened an investigation into the audit by Ernst and Young of the financial statements of NMC Health for the year ended December 31 2018."

An EY spokeswoman said: "We can confirm that EY has been notified of the FRC's intention to conduct an investigation into the audit of NMC Health for the year ended December 31.

"We will be fully co-operating with the FRC during their inquiries.

"It would be inappropriate to comment further at this time."