On her 80th birthday today, Her Majesty The Queen announced the 2006 winners of The Queen’s Awards for Enterprise, the UK’s leading accolade for business success. There are 145 Awards, the highest total for 11 years.
This is the second year of The Queen’s Award for Enterprise Promotion, an Award for individuals who have played an outstanding and significant role in promoting the growth of enterprise and/or entrepreneurial skills and attitudes in others. They include a Lifetime Achievement Award, nine Standard Awards and, for the first time, an honorary Award, to an American citizen, Mr Doug Richard, a ‘dragon’ on BBC TV’s Dragons’ Den.
The Queen’s Awards for businesses honour outstanding UK companies from a firm with only three employees to an international giant employing nearly 30,000. Winners include a company that has installed over a million square metres of safety surfacing in playgrounds from Japan to Euro Disney (using 100,000 old truck tyres in the process); a jewellery manufacturer that has doubled overseas earnings to more than £150 million a year; a firm whose anti-fraud software has saved losses of more than £1 billion; producer of the first inflatable body armour that gives five times greater protection than conventional armour; and a firm of architectural joiners who helped in the restoration of Windsor Castle.
Sir Digby Jones, Director-General of the CBI, said:
“Such amazing diversity highlights the quality of winners of this prestigious business award, which rewards the commercial acumen of Britain’s leading companies, large and small. On the world stage the trading success of our manufacturing and service sector companies remains the bedrock of Britain’s economic strength, while the sheer inventiveness of winners in the Innovation category often takes your breath away.
“In the 21st century we are still critically dependent on our business champions. Indeed, today it is even more important that British businesses retain a competitive edge if we are to maintain our economic momentum – and judging by this year’s winners they’re doing just that!
“The Queen’s Awards have been a benchmark of business success for 40 years, helping thousands of firms to open up new markets, improve sales, enhance the commercial value of products and services, and boost staff morale and motivation.”
Products and services from winners in the International Trade category range from breakfast cereals, vacuum cleaners and diamond jewellery to gold mining, crop sprayers – and a nappy disposal system.
Awards in the Innovation category recognise a broad spectrum of outstanding achievement. Products include a CCTV system that reduces vehicle theft and vandalism on trains, cholesterol-reducing cheese and allergy-friendly foods, advanced contact lenses that give clearer vision and healthier eyes, exhaust silencers for powerboats, and a sensing device that is so sensitive it can detect air movement from a falling feather.
Winners in this year’s Sustainable Development category include a company that designs buildings that generate their own energy, harvest their own water and recycle waste, a zoo that makes a significant contribution to conserving biodiversity worldwide, and a 300-year-old brewery that applies advanced environmental techniques to traditional brewing methods.
In the second year of The Queen’s Award for Enterprise Promotion a Lifetime Achievement Award goes to Mr David Rowe, Director and founder of the University of Warwick Science Park, who has helped around a thousand new businesses and individuals to realise their enterprise ambitions in an area affected by the decline of the car industry. Recipients of the Standard Award are Mr John Anderson CBE (Sunderland), Mr Derek Browne (London), Mrs Janet Brumby (Hull), Mr Walter Herriott OBE (Cambridge), Mr Jason Holt (London), Dr Bryan Keating (Belfast), Professor David A Kirby (Guildford), Ms Amanda Parris (Rotherham) and Mr Peter Westgarth (Oxford). An honorary Award goes to Mr Douglas Richard, Chairman and Co-Founder of Library House, Cambridge, and a ‘dragon’ on the BBC TV programme Dragons’ Den.
