City successes at SME national awards 2018
Companies in and around Cambridge put in a fine showing at the 2018 SME National Business Awards.
The wins announced at Wembley Stadium included Kath Austin, founder of Cambridge-based BeeBee Wraps, who won the Entrepreneur of the Year title for her company’s organic cotton plastic-free food wraps.
Kath told the Cambridge Independent: “Receiving this award is such a boost for me and BeeBee Wraps, proving yet again that we are on the right track to a more sustainable world!”
Intelligent Fingerprinting, the revolutionary drug screening technology firm based on Evolution Business Park in Impington, won the prestigious Clydesdale Bank Business Innovation award at the event. This title followed on from securing the overall winner title at the 2018 SME Cambridgeshire Business Awards at Newmarket Racecourse in June, supported by the Cambridge Independent.
“We’re absolutely delighted to have won the Business Innovation prize at this year’s SME National Business Awards,” said Intelligent Fingerprinting’s CEO Jerry Walker. “It highlights our company’s ability, not just to introduce a revolutionary drug detection technology, but also to ensure that our solution is fully developed and manufactured to meet today’s growing market requirement for non-invasive drug tests.
“We were also proud to be representing Cambridgeshire at the SME National Business Awards final. Cambridge is proving a great place for an innovative medical device diagnostics company such as Intelligent Fingerprinting to grow its business, and we look forward to building on this success as we focus on extending our company’s sales drive to support employers, coroners, drug treatment services and offender management operations in 2019.”
The third win for local SMEs at the ceremony went to automated speech recognition company Speechmatics, who won the ‘Silverdisc High Growth Business of the Year’ category.
“The atmosphere at the event was fantastic,” said Speechmatics’ VP products, Ian Firth. “There was a real buzz among all the companies and it was great to hear about the challenges they have overcome in business, and as teams. These events are great ways to build new relationships and gain insights from others along the way.
“The icing on the cake was receiving the Silver Innovation award, a real celebration of the great work that the Speechmatics team do to maintain research and innovation across the whole company throughout the year. This continues to form the foundation of a growing company that really unlocks the power of speech and keeps putting speech back at the heart of communication.”
Meanwhile, Conscious Communications, based at St John’s Innovation Centre, won Community Business of the Year. It was an honourable win for the company that delivers the annual Brains Eden event as part of its community programme. It recently announced that it has “donated one third of its team’s time and expertise to supporting charitable initiatives in the last year”.
Conscious’ managing director Alison Taylor said: “We are so pleased to be achieving our ambition of using our skills to benefit others by combining our creativity and strategic expertise with ethics that make us proud and reflect our sense of social responsibility.
“The fact that we have built a successful business, that gives a third of its time and resource to good causes, is testament to our belief that professions like ours can indeed do well by doing good. We all find it extremely rewarding to see the success of our philosophy and business approach authenticated in the support we are able to deliver.”
