Following on from the British Chamber of Commerce awards that took place last week I thought it would be useful to you to send over a very brief précis of the winning businesses and why they are so interesting as they each make such great case studies in their own rights.  Whilst we appreciate that you will not be covering the award win particularly we would be very happy to arrange for you to speak with any of them about how they have achieved such phenomenal success at a time when most are struggling just to keep going.  I have flagged below the locations and some of the key factors of the businesses and would love to hear your thoughts on whether these would be of interest to you.  If you want further information on any of them please do just let me know. My contact details are at the end of the email:

Winner of overall Outstanding Business Achievement award and the Green Award – GD Environmental Services:

• Location:  Newport, Wales
• Business started in March 2003, just 45 employees
• Recently won a highly prestigious contract to build the Celtic Manor driving range for 2010 Ryder Cup – a contract worth £2 million.
• Developing a £32 million Waste to Energy plant capable of recycling all of Newport’s domestic and commercial waste into renewable energy – it will be the first of its kind in the UK, and is seen by some to be the future of European waste management, making landfill largely redundant
• Are investing their full £50,000 winnings into their community project – the carbon neutrals – a team of enthusiastic young environmental individuals who work with sporting and entertainment venues to ensure more effective recycling such as the 5,000 plastic beer glasses they collected and recycled at a World Cup rugby qualifier in the Millennium Stadium  

Winner of Achievement in International Business award and Business of the Year - Nisa International

• Location:  Grimsby
• Food and drink exporters operating in 100 countries, 28 employees
• Through innovation, strong leadership and a high performance culture, they have consistently grown on average 22.4% since 2003

·    They have achieved such high levels of growth through initiatives such as increasing reach in key Iberian markets with a new logistics strategy in May 2007 and introducing a speciality range from a new supplier in May 2007

·    The new markets they are hoping to break into during the current climate are: 

• Mexico: in response to enquiries received.
• Indonesia: as a result of research indicating a growth in food imports from Europe.
• Bulgaria: as a result of increased UK ex-pat emigration and tourism.
• India: a difficult market, but one we see strategically important in terms of economic growth and size

Winner of Excellence in People Development award – HI Weldrick Ltd

• Location:  Doncaster
• Independent multiple community pharmacy, 550 employees
• Ron Alcock founded it in 1967, as a single pharmacy employing four people. Ron Alcock continues as Chairman of the company and his elder son Christopher is Managing Director. The organisation currently has 55 pharmacies employing 550 people in the South Yorkshire area.
• Their customers are primarily the people of the local communities of South Yorkshire and because their pharmacies are located within the communities, the business is proactive in those areas and has a strong sense of social responsibility.
• Staff are empowered to put forward innovative ideas of their own that provide self-development opportunities in areas of particular personal interest. Two recent examples of these ideas have led to the introduction of a translation service to assist the expanding Polish community and a specialist service for deaf and hearing-impaired patients and customers.
• The company received City & Guilds Approved Centre status for the delivery of NVQs in Pharmacy Services. This has enabled the company to address pharmacy skills shortages, introduce new technologies and provide enhanced services within the NHS contract.  They have established links with local schools to encourage students into pharmacy careers with Weldricks support and now have several pharmacists within the company who first came to them from school on work placement, one of whom won the national Pharmacy Business Young Pharmacist of the Year Award 2007.

Winners of Excellence in Customer Service Award – Arena Group of Companies

• Location:  Wakefield
• Nature of business - Supply and service of print and document solutions, 126 employees
• Their market  is vast and covers both private and public sector organisations within the UK. However, the company’s target market consists of organisations that produce and receive a high volume of documents such as schools, local government, printers and professional services.
• The highly successful acquisition strategy applied since 1999, combined with a move into the lucrative colour market, saw turnover more than triple from 1999 to 2007.
• A key objective over the next three years is for all employees to become Trusted Advisors to the company’s customers.  Launched at the Annual Conference 2008, all staff committed to adding a new dimension to their customer service offering.  Recognising that, if they were to be the very best at what they do, they need to “fix the customer” as well as “fix the machine”.   

Winners of Award for Innovation through Technology – Rapide Communication Ltd

• Location:  Coventry
• Telecoms company focusing on staff and customer communication using mobile phones, 25 employees
• They are a software company providing innovative ways to use mobile phones to communicate with customers and staff. Since the company was formed in 2000 their client list has grown to over 400 clients - including over a third of the FTSE500
• In 2007 Company Director, Nigel Shanahan set up Rant & Rave, a multi channel (SMS, Voice, Email, Web and WAP) feedback application that captures customer’s opinions right at the point of service delivery. The information is then instantly available to their clients via the Rant & Rave dashboard – a presentation format they designed themselves
• Rant & Rave allows any customer to leave feedback. Rapide’s content management system lets the company send and receive multiple amounts of messages. The data from these messages is sent to a database, presented graphically on the Rant & Rave dashboard using Rapide’s own software. Rant and Rave has developed into a valuable service gaining new customers and helping increase profit margins.
• In the one year since Rant and Rave has launched profits have risen by more than 30%

Winner of Entrepreneur of the Year Award – Barbara Cox of Nutrichef Limited

• Location:  Poole, Dorset
• Nutrichef produce and deliver healthy meals, they have 12 employees
• Nutrichef is a healthy meal delivery business that provides freshly-prepared, wheat-free, dairy-free meals to customers’ homes
• Their core products are 14, 30 and 90-day meal plans. Customers who book one of these plans receive their breakfast, lunch and dinner in insulated cool bags with ice packs, delivered to their homes.
• Nutrichef operates a fresh service (delivery of one or two days’ meals at a time) throughout Dorset, Hampshire and Surrey, and a fresh-frozen service (delivery of one week’s meals) which covers most other parts of the country.
• They have many different kinds of customers including: people wishing to improve their health generally; people wanting to lose weight; people fighting serious illnesses (such as cancer); people who are busy and don’t have time to prepare healthy meals for themselves; and people actively involved in sports.
• Barbara became interested in nutrition during an eight-year stay in Japan. Struck by the delicious flavours and health-inducing properties of Japanese food, as well as the low levels of obesity, heart disease and cancer, she embarked on a course in nutrition and learned about healthy cooking from a top Japanese restaurateur.
• As part of a promotional campaign for Nutrichef on a local radio station, the controller was so impressed with her engaging way of talking about nutrition that she was invited back as a guest every day for the remaining three weeks of the promotion.  Since then she’s been a guest on four local radio stations, given talks to a wide range of audiences (from school children to doctors), and written articles for a national cancer awareness publication.  

Claire Robinson

Eclair