Swindon & Wiltshire News
Monarch’s birthday marked with Queen’s Enterprise Awards for businesses
The achievements of businesses across the regions have been celebrated as the Queen marks her 96th birthday, with awards for Innovation, International Trade, Sustainable, Sustainable Development, and Promoting Opportunity.
Winners will be invited to a Royal reception and presented with an award by a Lord Lieutenant – one of the Queen’s official representatives.
This year 232 businesses across the UK were recognised. There were 141 recipients of the International Trade award, 51 recipients of the Innovation award, 31 recipients of the Sustainable Development award, and nine recipients of the Promoting Opportunity awards.
Small Business Minister Paul Scully said: “This country is renowned for its entrepreneurial achievements and there is no greater showcase for it than The Queen’s Awards. It’s vital we celebrate the success of our businesses and recognise the contributions they make to communities across the country.
“I congratulate this year’s winners for their hard work and commitment over the last year and I wish them every success for the future.”
In Berkshire, TOWER Cold Chain Solutions was celebrating an International Trade award.
TOWER Cold Chain Solutions, which began trading in 2012, builds reusable thermal containers that are rented to the global pharmaceutical industry and used to transport temperature- sensitive products such as vaccines, blood kits, medical devices and clinical trials materials.
Tower increased its fleet of rental containers, from 300 to nearly 3000, over the last 18 months. In three years overseas sales grew by 250 per cent and the proportion of total sales exported grew from 59 per cent to 80 per cent using sales and operational teams in the USA, Europe, APAC and South Africa.
Top markets are the USA, Germany, Belgium, South Africa and China. The period saw increasing commercial success with UK staff numbers growing from 23 to 40. The company wins the Queen’s Award for International Trade for Outstanding Short Term Growth in overseas sales over the last three years.
“We are tremendously proud to receive the Queen’s Award for Enterprise: International Trade, which is a tribute to the expertise and hard work of the entire Tower team,” commented Tower Cold Chain’s CEO Niall Balfour.
“Recognising our international growth shows how we are focused on meeting our customers global supply chain needs and will continue to invest and collaborate to deliver this.
“It is our vision to become the number-one cold-chain shipping facility of choice worldwide. Winning this prestigious award recognises this journey and acknowledges our customers trust, but above all, marks the tremendous efforts, expertise and hard work of all our team at Tower.
“I would like to thank and congratulate every one of them for their contribution– this award is a real testament to their support and our continued international growth.”
The firm employs 40 people at its headquarters in Theale.
In Bristol, there was an innovation award for Neighbourly Limited. Established in 2014, has developed an innovative digital platform that helps businesses donate volunteer time, financial support, and surplus products to local communities.
The Neighbourly platform provides a digital presence to thousands of local good causes operating in communities across the UK and Ireland. It enables large businesses to develop measurable and scalable programmes to benefit the communities in which they are based.
Unlike traditional CSR programmes that tended to support a small number of national or international charities, the Neighbourly platform gives businesses access to thousands of vetted small charities and community causes working at a hyper-local level to tackle a broad spectrum of societal and environmental issues and themes.
Companies can track, measure, and quantify their impact and be fully transparent about the action they are taking to meet their CSR and social value commitments in an authentic way, thereby building consumer and employee trust.
Steve Butterworth, CEO at Neighbourly said: “It’s an absolute honour for Neighbourly to have been recognised with a Queen’s Awards for Enterprise.
“The last few years have been incredibly tough for local communities and businesses alike. To have been able to grow a technology solution that has helped organisations to have a positive impact at a local level during this time is testament to a changing world in which being a successful business is being one that is a force for good.
“Huge thanks must go not only to our corporate partners and investors, whose unwavering commitment to social and environmental impact in local communities has enabled us to build and scale an award-winning technology platform, but to our 20,000+ network of local good causes and our talented team who make critical local impact possible every day.”
Neighbourly employs 31 people.
In Bath there were Innovation Awards for partners CiteAb and Storm Consultancy.
CiteAb is a small life science data company that began trading in 2013.
In conjunction with Storm Consulting they have created a platform that extracts structured data from unstructured academic literature.
The platform allows users to access details of reagents (antibodies, kits, biochemicals, experimental models and proteins) quickly, based on several criteria, such as number of times used, and previous results as documented in scientific papers.
The innovative technology at the core of the data platform takes millions of academic papers and extracts key information from them through a combination of natural language processing, sentiment analysis, artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, algorithmic processing, and an element of human quality control.
The resulting outputs enable effective treatments for medical conditions to be developed quicker and more efficiently than was previously possible.
Founder Dr Andrew Chalmers said: “It is really amazing to look back on how far we’ve come from a simple idea I had when working in a lab at the University of Bath, struggling to find antibodies that worked, to being recipients of the Queen’s Award today. I am so proud that our Bath-based business, spun out of the University, now serves suppliers and researchers internationally and helps them accelerate research.
“I am grateful to Storm for our partnership over the years, and to the University of Bath who were instrumental in starting CiteAb.
“Above all, I want to thank the team who make CiteAb a fantastic company that I love being a part of. Their hard work over the years has propelled our growth and fuelled our success.”
Storm Consultancy is a software development company established in 2009.
In conjunction with CiteAb Limited, they have created a platform that extracts structured data from unstructured academic literature.
The platform allows users to access details of reagents (antibodies, kits, biochemicals, experimental models and proteins) quickly, based on several criteria, such as number of times used, and previous results as documented in scientific papers.
The innovative technology at the core of the data platform takes millions of academic papers and extracts key information from them through a combination of natural language processing, sentiment analysis, artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, algorithmic processing, and an element of human quality control.
The resulting outputs enable effective treatments for medical conditions to be developed quicker and more efficiently than was previously possible.
David Kelly, CEO, said: “To be recognised as one of the most innovative companies in the UK through the Queen’s Award programme is fantastic.
“It is testimony to the incredible hard work and dedication that our team has put in over the years. We are also indebted to the multitude of entrepreneurial individuals and organisations who have entrusted us to bring their ideas to market and then innovate alongside them as they grow.”
And in the Wiltshire village of Malmesbury there was an International Trade award for The Wentworth Wooden Jigsaw Company Ltd.
Wentworth Puzzles began trading in 1991, producing unique and intricately hand-crafted wooden jigsaw puzzles which they manufacture using laser technology.
Initially selling them through retailers, in the last 14 years the company has actively sought to sell their puzzles direct to customers through dedicated web sites in the UK, USA and more recently Germany.
It still sells to selected galleries, museums and charities, which then retail the products through their gift shops and websites.
In 2015 the company prepared a ten year export growth plan and overseas sales grew by a total of 439 per cent in six years with the proportion of goods exported increasing from 38 per cent to 60 per cent.
Sarah Watson, managing director, said “We are delighted to have won the award, especially in this year of the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee! Our puzzles have become increasingly popular and I am so proud of our team here, who have worked relentlessly to keep on creating and making fantastic puzzles which continue to delight our customers worldwide.”
The company, which employs 45 people, wins the Queen’s Award for International Trade for Outstanding Long Term Growth over the last six years.
