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Bedfordshire winners of the King's Awards for Enterprise 2023
Sat 1st July 2023
HM Lord-Lieutenant of Bedfordshire, Susan Lousada, is delighted that three Bedfordshire-based companies are among the winners in the 2023 King’s Awards for Enterprise. Formerly known as the Queen’s Award for Enterprise, these prestigious business awards are announced annually.

SunGod has been recognised in the Sustainable Development category and make performance sunglasses and snow goggles. SunGod’s mission is to see better: through their lenses, through their actions, and through doing business better.

Midas Pattern Company also received the award in the Sustainable Development category. They are a Carbon Net-Zero precision manufacturing company that supplies a range of large, complex, prototype and production polyurethane moulded enclosures in flame retardant materials that are ideally suited to high value, innovative, scientific analytical and medical equipment.

Tinware Direct has been recognised in the International Trade category. Tinware Direct creates and supplies metal and cardboard packaging solutions, offering a range of ready-to-fill and bespoke tin boxes and cardboard tubes.

On receiving news of the awards, HM Lord-Lieutenant of Bedfordshire Susan Lousada said "The Kings Award for Enterprise is a nationally recognised award and Bedfordshire is full of forward-thinking entrepreneurial innovative businesses. I am delighted that these three excellent companies have been recognised by His Majesty the King in this way. I am thrilled to send my congratulations to the winning organisations, and I look forward to presenting them with their awards later this year”.

King’s Award for Enterprise winners can be either non-profit or business and must be based in the UK. They are required to demonstrate a good compliance record, be a self-contained enterprise that markets its own products or services and is under its own management, have at least 2 full-time UK employees or part-time equivalents and demonstrate strong corporate social responsibility.

Sustainable Development recipients are required to demonstrate how they have achieved outstanding sustainable development for more than 2 years and they are required to provide evidence of the benefits or positive outcomes of their actions or interventions.

International Trade Award recipients are defined as having demonstrated that their business has made a minimum of £100,000 in overseas sales in the first year of their entry and show year-on-year growth; proved that that their organisation has achieved outstanding growth in overseas earnings relative to their business size and sector; and proven a steep year-on-year growth (without dips) in overseas sales over 3 years - or substantial year-on-year growth (without dips) over 6 years.