Lanarkshire Business Awards

The Lanarkshire Business Awards celebrate the best and the most innovative businesses the area has to offer.

Sponsored by South and North Lanarkshire Councils, Lanarkshire Development Agency, Supercounty, the Royal Bank of Scotland and the Herald newspaper, the annual event celebrates the outstanding contribution companies make to the Lanarkshire economy.

In the 1998 awards, which took place in Motherwell Concert Hall in October, was attended by more than 400 business men and women and the main speaker was Scottish Office Minister for Education, Helen Liddell MP.

A number of South Lanarkshire companies were recognised for excellence...

Robert Lightbody was named Lanarkshire Business Person of the Year in recognition of his achievements in turning the family run bakery business into a major supplier of specialist products. Lightbody’s Celebration Cakes, is based in Bothwell Road, Hamilton employs 240 staff and has an annual turnover of more than £12 million. The company supplies cakes to a number of High Street names including ASDA, Safeway and J Sainsbury.

Quality assurance company, Gael Quality of East Kilbride, who featured in issue 2 of “Business South Lanarkshire,” was awarded the title of Small Business of the Year. A graduate of the Entrepreneurship Programme and the Strathclyde Software Innovation Centre in East Kilbride, Gael specialises in the design and marketing of Business Management Application Software and recently opened new premises in Scottish Enterprise Technology Park, East Kilbride.

Service Provider of the Year was Display Products Technology of East Kilbride. Set up by David Ware in 1993, the company specialises in Liquid Crystal Display Technology. Now recognised as a worldwide repairer of LCD panels, DPT employs 62 people in East Kilbride and 25 in Austin Texas and turns over around £2.5 million per annum.

EKC of East Kilbride received the award for Outstanding Export Performance. The company has become one of Europe’s leading suppliers to the semiconductor and high technology industries. While the fundamental research and development unit is based at specialist laboratories in California, the management and coordination of the company is based in East Kilbride. EKC employs 37 people.

Other winners of awards were Calcarb Ltd of Bellshill (join winner of Outstanding Export Performance) and Boots Contract Manufacturing of Airdrie (Quality Award for all round business excellence).

Companies are nominated for the award by organisations such as the East Kilbride Business Centre, the local authorities, LECs, Trusts and Lanarkshire Development Agency. They were then short-listed by a panel of representatives from Lanarkshire Development Agency, the CBI and the Royal Bank of Scotland.

The panel visited each short-listed company before a decision was made on the winners. A number of criteria were looked at:

Councillor Jim Daisley, chair of South Lanarkshire Council’s Economic & Employment Development Committee, said: “South Lanarkshire is full of innovative people with the drive and ambition to see their ideas become reality. The recent Lanarkshire Business Awards were dominated by South Lanarkshire companies whose vision and determination have turned them into the highly successful businesses they are today. They have also brought a lot of benefits to the area’s economy through the creation of jobs and investment. I’m delighted such high calibre companies have been recognised in this way and wish them all the best for the future.”

Ian Livingstone, chair of Lanarkshire Development Agency, said: “The Lanarkshire Business Awards are all about recognising the important contribution our businesses are making to the economic regeneration of Lanarkshire.“Our winners are fine examples of industrial and commercial success in their chosen fields, and we will endeavour to encourage many more to follow suit. It is their innovation, energy and success that encourages us to be optimistic for the future of this country.”

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