Winner: Sheppee International

Finalists: Industrial Textiles and Plastics; Nature’s Laboratory

Sheppee International, which supplies innovative machinery for the glass container industry, exports 95 per cent of its turnover, which last year was £8.5 million, around the globe.

In a bid to boost things further, the company has recently set up an office in China to take advantage of the expanding markets in China, Indonesia and Thailand.

Sheppee also recently began supplying the Australian market and is now eyeing the massive potential of the American market.

Building relationships with existing customers has provided new opportunities, enabled the product to be sold into new geographic areas and provide a reference point for new customers in new markets.

This strategy culminated in Sheppee winning the Queen’s Award for Enterprise in International trade for 2013.

The Sheppee brand is globally recognised throughout the glass container industry.

It is a market leader in hotware handling in the glass industry, in fact it is the only company to specialise completely in this line.

Judges in the Dare to Export award described Sheppee as a business that lives and breathes export.

Entry into new markets has seen Sheppee through the recession and enabled it to achieve a company record turnover in the financial year to June 2012. This has resulted in additional industrial units being taken on to provide additional capacity help reduce the lead time in supplying products, as well as theaddition of six staff since the recession period of 2009.