Member Article

UKTI celebrates North West Queen’s Award winners

The best of the North West’s exporters have celebrated success at an event at Aintree Racecourse with UK Trade & Investment (UKTI), and to discuss how to motivate more local businesses to follow in their successful footsteps.

The event, to congratulate the companies on winning the Queen’s Award for International Trade or the Queen’s Award for Innovation, was attended by fourteen North West winners from across the region, three from Lancashire.

The Queen’s Awards are highly prestigious awards for outstanding achievement by UK businesses, judged to a demanding level.

In order to win an International Trade Award, businesses must be able to demonstrate substantial growth in overseas earnings and commercial success as a result of exports at a level considered ‘outstanding’ for relative business size and business sector.

The Lancashire winners attending the event to meet their fellow Queen’s Award champions and to hear about how they can help encourage new companies onto the export ladder were Carradice of Nelson, Blackpool based T.I.S.S Limited and What More UK Limited from Burnley.

Also attending were Cheshire companies Cygnet Group Ltd from Northwich, Extronics Ltd from Middlewich and Heat Trace from Frodsham, as well as Merseyside’s Clarke Energy Ltd, NGF Europe and Smylie Limited.

Greater Manchester representatives were Contra Vision Ltd and Park Cloud Ltd, both from Stockport, High Voltage Partial Discharge Ltd from Salford, Innovative Technology Limited from Oldham and Travel Counsellors Ltd from Bolton.

Clive Drinkwater, Director of UKTI North West, said, “As I have said on many occasions now, winning business overseas is vital for our future growth so, on behalf of UKTI North West, I would like to congratulate the companies here today.

“The achievement of winning a Queen’s Award is a tremendous example for other businesses to follow.

“This year there are 12 Queen’s Award for International Trade winners here in the North West – an improvement on last year’s total of 11. As well as that some of our best exporting companies have also won the Queen’s Award for Innovation.

“This is a fantastic result and one that I feel we should mark here in the region. I am delighted to be able to bring so many of our winners together for this event to celebrate their success, share experiences and look ahead to future opportunities.

“All eyes are on the North West at the moment with the International Festival of Business (IFB), and I have seen plenty of enthusiastic delegates at IFB meeting experts from all over the world, and would strongly encourage companies to get involved and find out how they too can become exporters.

“Overseas trade is vital to the growth of the economy and the growth of individual businesses and the companies here are examples of what can be achieved.”

The 162 Queen’s Award winners in 2014 ranged from small, innovative private businesses to large FTSE companies, and all companies are encouraged to enter next year’s historic 50th Anniversary Queen’s Awards.

Entries are open now and close on 30 September 2014. More details and an application form are available here. https://queensawards.bis.gov.uk/

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Simon Malia .