More winners of The Press Business Awards share their challenges and triumphs from last year, and also their hopes and major aspirations for the coming 12 months.

Business Personality of the Year - Tracey Smith, chief executive of York Science Park:

“We celebrated our 25th anniversary last year, a momentous occasion that merited appropriate celebration and recognition. It was quite a challenge working on our Anniversary Economic Impact Report, and measuring the extent of our impact, but incredibly rewarding to see the figures it revealed, it has been amazing to see the true impact of the science park, not just on our residents but on the city as a whole.”

Speaking about the plans for 2017, Ms Smith said 54 per cent of current residents were planning to expand over the coming year, and 70 per cent said they had experienced an increase in their annual turnover. “These are great figures which illustrate that even in the face of Brexit discussions and potential economic changes, small businesses remain optimistic, resilient and buoyant.

“We are planning some great projects for 2017 that my team and I are all excited about. We will be making some changes to our board – more details on this will be coming soon.

“We will also be working with the University of York, helping to support their student enterprise work. Almost 60 per cent of our residents have a connection to the university, through formal relationships, through to collaborative research projects and hiring graduates, the relationships between our residents and the university plays a critical role in their success, and it will be great to help those relationships grow even more over the next year.

“There have been several announcements recently about an incredible range of funding packages available to companies in the area thanks to the university’s new Product and Process Innovation (PAPI) project, and the Biorenewables Development Centre’s European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) grant.

“The PAPI funding is available to help fund the purchase of equipment to support innovation, up to the value of £20,000, for companies working in a range of sectors including bioscience, digital and creative media, electronics, food and drink, health and social care and manufacturing using biological and chemical materials.

“The ERDF funding managed by Biorenewables Development Centre will help Yorkshire businesses take advantage of the huge opportunities in the emerging bio economy, and innovate through targeted R&D projects.”

Small Business of the Year - Langver Engineering:

Claire Matten and Scott Taylor, directors of the Thirsk-based company, which is the UK’s main producer of ratchet tensioners for curtain-sided lorries, said the main triumphs and success of 2016 were having a record year in tensioner sales, selling 87,000, which was 20 per cent up on 2015, and turning over £2.4 million.

It also achieved ISO 9001:2015 Management System Standard in design, development and manufacture of bespoke curtain-sider ratchet tensioners and won the Hambleton Business awards for learning and development.

It appointed staff as managers and they successfully backed the directors and helped drive the business forward.

“The main challenges over the past year were taking the risk and making the decision to take on a second unit and making it work by employing many new staff

“Also keeping our tensioner manufacturing costs low to stay ahead of our competitors by investing in modern technology, speeding up the manufacturing process and again appointing managers to help organise everything, back us up and help.” One challenge on taking on the new unit was increasing and monitoring stock levels, helped by a new manufacturing stock control system and staff training.

They said their main plans for 2017 were to become more recognised in the European market and hopefully increase sales in Europe, and getting our stock levels even higher so they could get large and small orders out with as little delay as possible.

“Our 2017 ambitions are not to stop at Europe, but to continue into markets such as the Americas and Russia, as they are becoming very big on the manufacture of curtain-sided trucks and trailers.”

The challenges they envisaged in the coming 12 months would be to gain the trust of customers in Europe and other countries. “We need to get them to invest and believe we will get the outstanding quality tensioners to them as fast as possible and with no issues.

“Stiff competition from competitors will be another issue and then there is the uncertainty of us leaving the EU, which we are sure it will play a big part in 2017/18.

“The trailer market has been so big in the last three years that there is an abundance of brand new trailers sitting in the UK waiting to be used or just starting to get used.

“Because of this we think new trailer sales will fall slightly but the spares market will rise. With Langver having 90 per cent of the UK market in new trailer sales but also used trailer repairs that places us in a good position.”

Large Business of the Year - Britcab:

Director Richard Wilsdon said 2016 had been an extremely challenging yet ultimately rewarding one.

“We moved to a new, all-purpose five-acre site in December 2015, so the start of the year consisted of getting our ‘house in order’ and tooling up accordingly. It’s been a gradual process of updating/upgrading the site.

“We undertook our largest project to date in 2016 for Leicester Council, which went very well with glowing feedback from the client. As we have expanded we are now able to quote for more prestigious projects, but we still pick and choose these as we need to be 100 per cent confident we can give the client the service/time they need and the quality of the project will be up to our usual standard.

“These projects can be time-consuming and labour-intensive so we need to keep on top of our production schedule to ensure a smooth process.

“We were expecting a drop in business in the aftermath of the dreaded ‘Brexit’ vote. Strangely, we were the busiest we have ever been in the month following the vote, which is a real show of confidence in the economy on both a regional/national level.

“We have made a habit of asking our customers whether they are busy in general and what effect the vote has had on their business. It has been surprising how busy the majority of people have been this year and the belief in the industry and in the economy on the whole has been overwhelmingly positive.

“The major adverse effect of the vote has predominately come from overseas suppliers who have hit companies like ourselves with both immediate and phased in price increases.

“Going forward, I think their needs be a real declaration of confidence from the Government and the people in power. People are busy and want to be spending and expanding but are maybe holding fire until the market settles a little.

“We are having to ensure our online presence is developed and updated to keep ahead of the trend. In the last year we have begun building timber-clad units (cedar/larch) and these have proved to be really popular.

“We differentiate ourselves from others in that you will always be able to talk to a director on the phone and get an immediate price/answer to any inquiry. We pride ourselves on our service and turnaround time. As we grow, we need to ensure we don’t lose this personal service that our customers have come to expect.”

They had hired their first two apprentices in 2016, a plumber and a joiner, and expected to phase in more apprentices over the next two years.

“We are looking at establishing a southern-based depot and this is a natural next step for Britcab. We have had a year in the new depot to set out how we want things to happen and how we want things to run, we now intend to use York as a blueprint for strategically placed depots across the country.”