Region’s innovative businesses recognised

THE region’s brightest business innovators were recognised at the Yorkshire Forward Innovator/10 Awards ceremony last night.

EMSc (UK) from Rotherham, Shipley-based Radio Design and Harvard Engineering of Leeds scooped three of the four awards up for grabs, with Double Green from North Cave sharing a collaboration award with the University of York.

Yorkshire Forward’s Innovator/10 awards celebrate innovation and collaboration among businesses in Yorkshire along with associates Yorkshire Innovation and Business Link Yorkshire.

Jim Farmery, assistant director of business at Yorkshire Forward, said: “Innovation is the lifeblood of industry and through these awards we hope to encourage businesses in the region to develop new and exciting ideas to take to the market.

“The future of business is reliant on successful innovation and that is what we hope to promote through Innovator/10.”

The winners were announced at Leeds City Museum led by guest speaker Tim Smit, founder of the Eden Project.

Each winner picked up a £3,000 prize to spend on further innovative developments.

The Innovation in Action Award went to EMSc (UK) for its development of a voltage optimisation unit that works to significantly reduce energy consumption. Powerstar reduces the voltage supplied to a building, therefore generating savings on electricity consumption and CO2 emissions.

Dr Alex Mardapittas, managing director EMSc (UK) and creator of Powerstar, said: “We are extremely happy to have won this award, as of course we are to win any accolade in praise of our product.  But we are particularly pleased with this award as it recognises and champions innovation in our region. We are a company with a firm belief in innovation and in UK manufacturing – the Powerstar is the only voltage optimisation unit designed and manufactured in the UK and we are extremely proud of that fact.

“The prestige that surrounds our winning this award will help us to reach more people and generate further interest in Powerstar. This should hopefully allow for us to grow and expand further as a company – particularly in product development and the furthering of innovative ideas – which is our primary concern. This in turn will allow for future job creation within our region and beyond.”

Radio Design picked up the Young Innovative Business Award after developing a way of allowing up to three cellular base stations from two UK-based mobile phone system operators to share the same antenna system, resulting in both site rental and equipment cost savings. Without this, separate antennae systems and often an additional mast would have to be installed to allow a cell site to be shared.

Managing director Eric Hawthorn said: “Everyone is thrilled that we were selected as a finalist and picking a winner must have been a real challenge for the judges given the quality and strength of all finalists.

“We are a close knit team and many people have been involved in the concept, design, development, manufacture and commercialisation of our product. This award is recognition of an outstanding team effort.”

Harvard Engineering scooped the Sustainable Innovation Award after developing LeafNut, a ground breaking central monitoring and wireless control system for street lights. It provides monitoring, switching and dimming control of each street light and also significantly reduces carbon emissions by 100kg per light per annum, which can lead to savings of £46 per street light per annum.

Double Green and the University of York won the Lord Stafford Partners in Innovation Award for developing the use of glycerine, a co-product from biodiesel production, in various applications including the generation of biogas. The research and development work carried out at the University of York contributed to the characterisation of glycerin at different stages of production as well as the development of protocols for the synthesis of added value chemicals from glycerine.

Tim Smit said: “Innovation is the lifeblood of our civilisation and it is now that society and business must celebrate the innovator, the change maker and the experimenter and the fear of failure needs to be replaced by the pirate grin of the daredevil.”

The four winners were whittled down from a list of 12 finalists following a series of site visits by an expert panel of judges.