Ishida Europe celebrates Queen's Award for Enterprise
16/10/2014
A Birmingham-based packaging machinery manufacturer has won a Queen’s Award for Enterprise, the UK’s highest accolade for business success. Ishida Europe, based in Woodgate Business Park, has received its award for International Trade.
The award was presented to the company by Dr Paul Sabapathy the Lord Lieutenant of the West Midlands, at a special ceremony in front of over 200 Ishida Europe staff. Receiving it were representatives from the workforce, Nick Price, Project Engineer, and Andrew Bridges, Assembly Technician.
“This award celebrates what each and every one of you at Ishida Europe has achieved,” said Dr Sabapathy. “None of this success would be possible without your hard work, commitment and dedication, so I am particularly pleased to be presenting it to the employees – and of course to be acknowledging the achievements of a West Midlands business.”
Ishida Europe has been recognised for increasing exports as a percentage of total turnover from 65% to 76%. To deliver this growth, Ishida has implemented a strategy that has both facilitated increased market penetration in established markets, and also enabled entrance into new geographic regions.
“This is an outstanding achievement and is the result of the hard work and dedication of all our employees,” comments Ishida Europe managing director Graham Clements.
“From our establishment in 1984, we have always recognised that we operate in a global market and created a business model that ensures our customers receive the same high standards of service and support wherever they are in the world. Coupled with our market-leading equipment and pro-active new product development programme, these have helped to drive our success even in the recent troubled economic times.”
Ishida Europe is the European subsidiary of Ishida Co Ltd of Japan, the inventor and world market leader of the multihead weigher that revolutionised the accurate weighing and packing of a huge variety of products, such as snacks, confectionery, frozen food, fresh salad, meat, poultry and ready meals.
Today, in addition to multihead weighers, Ishida designs and manufactures a comprehensive range of complementary packing equipment that can be used as part of a line, or configured to provide complete ‘Ishida’ turnkey packing line solutions, in particular for snacks and fresh foods.
To meet growing demand for its products throughout the world, Ishida Europe has now opened a new commercial centre next door to its manufacturing facility in Woodgate, which will house its sales and support functions. This will enable the company to further expand its manufacturing operations at its existing premises. In addition, from April 2010 to October 2014, the company increased its staffing level across the EMEA territory by over 30% from 369 to 484.
“We have ambitious plans to continue to develop our global business,” concludes Graham Clements. “The Queen’s Award provides the ideal foundation for the next phase of our growth.”