Dec 26, 2022

We meet the companies of the year from Reach's business awards across the country in 2022 One winner said: 'This award will allow us to continue to grow our business, recruit quality staff and uphold our reputation across the UK' 04:00, 26 DEC 2022 Bookmark GloucestershireLive Business Awards 2022 - Leeways Packaging Services wins the GloucestershireLive Business of the Year award, sponsored by Randall & Payne (Image: Gloucestershire Echo and Gloucester Citizen) Group 28 Sign up to FREE email alerts from BusinessLive - National - our round-up of the headlines that matter every morning Invalid emailSomething went wrong, please try again later. Sign Up We use your sign-up to provide content in the ways you've consented to and improve our understanding of you. This means that we may include adverts from us and third parties based on our knowledge of you. We also may change the frequency you receive our emails from us in order to keep you up to date and give you the best relevant information possible. As always you can unsubscribe at any time. More info Group 28 As 2022 draws to a close we're looking back at some of the companies we have recognised as among the best in the business - from engineers to pasty makers. At BusinessLive we're proud to celebrate business success - and that's why we've held awards across the country in 2022 in partnership with our brilliant sister live brands. Our Reach events team has run business events in England - from Devon to Tyneside - in Wales and in Scotland through our sister site Insider.co.uk So we thought we'd bring together some of the winners from across the country to celebrate their success. This time we're looking at the companies that have won the large company of the year categories at our Reach events across the country. The companies here span sectors from engineering to outsourcing - and our lists acts as a showcase for British business resilience. And we know winners love our awards. Sean Keyes, whose engineering firm Sutcliffe was honoured at our Liverpool awards, said: "This award will allow us to continue to grow our business, recruit quality staff and uphold our reputation across the UK". We'll be honouring more businesses in our awards across the country in 2023 - keep reading BusinessLive for more details. Liverpool - Sutcliffe Winner of the Business of the Year (over 51 employees) - category at the Liverpool ECHO and BusinessLive Regional Business Awards 2022 Multidisciplinary structural and civil engineering firm Sutcliffe won the Business of the Year title for the second year in a row. Managing director, Sean Keyes said: "After winning the Business of the Year award last year, we were all delighted. To win it again for the second year in a row is a huge honour. "As a company founded in the heart of Merseyside, it really is great to win their award twice. Not to mention the fact that both myself and director Billy Baldwin were both Echo delivery boys in our youth! "Being recognised as Business of the Year is a testament to the staff at Sutcliffe and their incredible hard work despite the recent challenges over the last couple of years. "This award will allow us to continue to grow our business, recruit quality staff and uphold our reputation across the UK." Sutcliffe winners of the Business of the year (over 51 employees) (Image: Jason Roberts photography) Cambridgeshire - Metalcraft Winner of the Large Business of the Year category at the CambridgeshireLive Business Awards 2022 The judges said: "Metalcraft enables ideas to be turned into reality, transforming the world we live in throughout its more than 150 years of history. From supplying the medical industry to the nuclear sector, this multi-million-pound business is constantly investing in its growth and wider ambitions for advanced manufacturing in Cambridgeshire." Barclays Award for Large Business of the Year | Sponsored by Barclays | Winner: Metalcraft. Cornwall - Proper Cornish Pasties Founded in 1988, Proper Cornish is a business that produces authentic Cornish pasties alongside a range of savoury pastries. In the last year alone, Proper Cornish produced 60,000 pasties a day, and 100,000 savoury pastries - and has tried to support the Cornish economy in its work. Many of Proper Cornish’s suppliers are based in Cornwall - but the business also sources its packaging, recycling and website design from Cornish companies. Proper Cornish’s authenticity and commitment to quality have helped it thrive, with turnover increasing 23% from 2021 to 2022, and plans to invest and expand further. Proper Cornish Ltd took home the Large Business of the Year Award (Image: Mike Lister Photography) Birmingham - Fortel Fortel won the brand new Diversity and Inclusion category at our Birmingham event before being named overall company of the year. The group, headquartered in Walsall, places thousands of agency staff at more than 130 locations and also trains the next generation of industry workers. Our judges described Fortel as a disruptor in its field and were impressed with its work in diversity and inclusion and how it excelled in a difficult sector during the pandemic. Fortel opened a new head office last year near the M6 which also contains a training academy to upskill workers from all backgrounds across the West Midlands. It also carried out an initiative called 'Top 5 by 2025' which promised to increase under-represented demographics in its own workforce by 25 per cent by 2025. At the event, Amarvir Sandhawalia, group chief operating officer at Fortel, told us: "We are a BME-owned business so diversity is at the forefront of what we do and in our own workforce. "In construction, we have seen over time that there's a struggle with diversity and, as an industry going forward, we have to diversify and move into different pools for talent selection which we haven't done in the past." Fortel is crowned Company of the Year at the Birmingham BusinessLive Awards 2022 with host Ed James (left) and editor Graeme Brown (right) South Wales - Au Vodka Winner of the Judges’ Choice Award and the overall Company of the Year title at the Swansea Bay Business Awards 2022 Swansea-based Au Vodka was a double winner at our Swansea Bay awards. Swansea friends Charlie Morgan, 26, and Jackson Quinn, 29, have been on the journey of a lifetime since starting Au Vodka back in 2015. From a limited run of 2,000 bottles to now manufacturing 35,000 bottles daily, the brand has experienced skyrocketing growth as it has become a game changer within the alcohol industry. The brand, underpinned by excellent marketing, use of social media, and product endorsement, has also enjoyed international expansion - and is now sold in 40 countries from Spain to Australia and most recently 32 states across the US. AU Vodka has also experienced exceptional revenue and profit growth. Jackson Quinn, Charlie Sloth, Charlie Morgan are behind Au Vodka's huge success (Image: Au Vodka) Hull - ResQ Winner of the Business of the Year (Over 51 employees) category at the Hull Live Business Awards 2022 Continued dramatic growth as a mature entity earned contact centre specialist ResQ the top accolade at November's event. It has won major contracts with huge clients, extending existing work with the likes of Vodafone and British Gas to enable such advances as the headcount has soared. No stranger to the stage, with industry accolades and Best Companies recognition, chief operating officer Matt Gray shed light on what makes the business work. He said: “The ethos of ResQ hasn’t changed since we started, it was all about doing what’s right for our clients and our clients’ customers and it is no different if that is at a small scale or a large corporate. “We speak to hundreds of thousands of our clients’ customers a day, we make sure they get a great experience on behalf of our clients. It is a privately-owned business, a family feel and a family ethos, regardless of whether it was 50 people when I joined or 2,000 now.” Matt had joined in 2007, a year on from Nic Marshall and Gill Marchbank founding ResQ with an initial team of 12. It now operates four separate call centres, two in Hull and two in Durham. ResQ was honoured at the Hull Live Business Awards 2022 (Image: ,,Richard Addison Photor) Manchester - Network Plus Network Plus provides services for utility and infrastructure clients across the North West and beyond. After their win, Stuart Fraser, joint CEO at Network Plus, said: "It was a great honour to win the Business of the Year in our category at the MEN Awards last week. Although we provide vital utility and infrastructure services to clients across the UK, Manchester holds a special place in our hearts. "In the Greater Manchester area, we support clients serving a population of 2.7m with essential services including water, gas, transport from our headquarters. We need a strong team to deliver these services and take Network Plus forward, which is why we provide opportunities for apprentices, graduates and young trainees within the local area." Network Plus won the Turnover over £100m award - sponsored by PwC (Image: Jason Roberts photography) Gloucestershire - Leeways Packaging Winner of the Business of the Year category at the GloucestershireLive Business Awards 2022 Leeways Packaging was founded in 1971 and has grown to become one of the leading suppliers of thermoformed plastic packaging and process solutions in the UK. The GloucestershireLive Business Awards - supported in 2022 by returning headline sponsor Randall & Payne - has been recognising the county’s best businesses for many years. Sarah Pullen, Reach Plc's commercial director of regionals, who addressed the event, said: "Whether you are living here as well as setting up business here - the warmth, the co-opetition, the collaboration and the imagination of businesses in Gloucestershire is outstanding." GloucestershireLive Business Awards 2022 - Leeways Packaging Services wins the GloucestershireLive Business of the Year award, sponsored by Randall & Payne (Image: Gloucestershire Echo and Gloucester Citizen) North East - Cleveland Containers Winner of the North East Company of the Year 2022 category at the North East Business Awards 2022 Shipping container specialist Cleveland Containers pipped Newcastle Building Society and eQuality Solutions to the grand prize at the North East Business Awards 2022 . The £60m turnover had already been named Teesside Company of the Year at the awards' regional heat i n June - and went on to secure a minority investment from private equity firm LDC to help with its growth. Andrew Thompson, chief operating officer, told us: “I’m just so delighted for the whole team - old and new. Some people have been with the company since it’s inception. I’m also delighted for Jane and Jonathan, the owners of Cleveland Containers who’ve just inspired everyone to achieve such greatness and it’s fantastic for them. “We’re up to 70 people now having grown quite considerably over the last 12 months. We’re looking to probably double that in the next 12-18 months. We’ve got really ambitious growth plans, expanding into new sectors and creating a much larger depot network across the UK but all of it from our head office in Teesside, where we’re looking forward to creating a lot more jobs.” Andrew Thompson of Cleveland Containers collects the top award at the North East Business Awards Grand Final 2022 at Hardwick Hall in County Durham. (Image: ChronicleLive) Leicestershire - Cite Full service, independent creative communications agency Cite was named overall 2022 Business of the Year at the LeicestershireLive Business Awards after earlier collecting the Professional Services Business of the Year award. Based on the edge of Leicester city centre, Cite has clients across the UK and Europe. It employs more than two dozen specialists across creative, technology, strategy, planning and delivery. It is led by Laura Bent and Dafydd Prichard and works with brands including the NHS, Continental Tyres, Sika UK, Puzzel, Sekonda, Saint-Gobain, Link and Motimate. Cite was overall Business of the Year at the LeicestershireLive Business Awards 2022 (Image: Alistair Langham) Read More