Agfa Graphics

Agfa Graphics, based in Leeds, scooped a national business 'Oscar' at the Manufacturing Excellence Awards (MX2007) in London on Wednesday 13 June.

The firm won the Arup Award for Sustainable Manufacturing at the awards ceremony held at the Marriott Hotel. MX2007 is the UK's most prestigious business awards where hundreds of companies compete to win one of just 13 awards.

Agfa Graphics is a world leader in prepress solutions for the printing and publishing industries. It provides commercial, newspaper and packaging printers with the most extensive range of prepress and inkjet printing solutions.

Renowned journalist, Andrew Marr, presented the awards and was joined by Margaret Hodge, Minister for Industry and Regions, who said tonight: "manufacturing is vital to our economy and the Government is committed to providing the right support to ensure that UK manufacturers continue to successfully compete in world markets.

"My congratulations go to Agfa Graphics. The company has gone from strength to strength, demonstrating that employing best practice will lead to success and ultimately long term sustainability,'' she continued.

"The future of manufacturing depends on industry raising investment, applying science and innovation, best practice and skills to create even better British products that comply with world demand in today's markets."

City & Guilds of London has been announced winner of a prestigious accolade in the annual London Excellence Awards 2007. Representatives from the City & Guilds were presented with the Blue Riband Award for Best Investor for Excellence at a gala dinner at Carisbrooke Hall, London on Monday 16 July.

The awards aim to recognise and reward the efforts of those organisations that strive for innovation, making continuous operational improvements and identifying best practice approaches that produce success. City & Guilds won in recognition of their robust approaches to management across all organisational activities. Since 2001 "Excellence" has been clearly driven through the organisation by the Director General and the leadership team. Their pro-active approach seeks input from the various stakeholders that impact on both current and future operations. Most importantly, the feedback drives future plans and improvements and there is clear evidence that this has led to a wide range of excellent results both financial and non-financial.