Tonight, members of 112 organisations that won Queen’s Awards for Enterprise 2004 will meet The Queen and other members of the Royal Family at a reception at Buckingham Palace, after a day of royal visits throughout the UK to celebrate ‘British Enterprise’.

The visits are to holders of Queen’s Awards in London, Scotland, Wales, East and North Yorkshire, Buckinghamshire, Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire, Somerset, and Tyne and Wear.

Across the UK, 112 leading organisations large and small won The Queen’s Awards for Enterprise 2004. They range from a small firm with only two employees to a giant organisation employing more than 12,000.  Winners come from almost every corner of the UK, manufacturing products as varied as scotch whisky, breakfast cereals, flying insect control equipment and a GPS-based low bridge warning system for high vehicles.

Three members of each winning company in 2004, expected to represent both management and staff, have been invited to tonight’s Buckingham Palace reception, which will also be attended by the Prime Minister, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry.

The Queen's Awards for Enterprise differ from personal honours because they recognise the achievement of the successful business unit as a whole - management and employees working as a team.  They come in three categories: International Trade (recognising outstanding achievements in overseas earnings); Innovation (for commercial success resulting from outstanding innovative achievements); and Sustainable Development (covering commercially successful products and services and approaches to management that have major benefits from the environment, society and the wider economy).

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