Interactive Archived News

Nominate Your Top Retailer Now!

Grampian Country Food, which currently employs over 1000 staff from the Haverhill area, have announced their decision to sponsor a category in the Haverhill Chamber’s inaugural Business Awards. This move reflects Grampian’s own commitment to business excellence and innovation and the company’s desire to promote public recognition of these values in local business.

Patrick Thornhill, Managing Director of Grampian Country Pork Suffolk, said, "We are delighted to sponsor the 'Retailer of the Year' as part of the Haverhill Business Awards. We are particularly keen to be associated with a local award within a sector that our business is closely linked, namely retail. By recognising the achievements made by retailers serving the community it will benefit the local people by ensuring that quality and service levels meet their expectations."


The judges will make this award to the organisation in the Haverhill and Clare area that can best demonstrate outstanding achievement in the retail sector. Areas of focus will include merchandising, customer service, new concepts and community involvement.

Haverhill Chamber Vice Chair, Elaine Collins commented, "We are thrilled that Grampian has agreed to sponsor this category, and that the company’s vision of Haverhill Business concurs with ours. This is a unique opportunity for retailers in the Haverhill and Clare areas to be recognised and profiled as local Retailer of the Year. These new Business Awards have been introduced to shine the spotlight on our business community and particularly those companies who are making a real contribution to the pattern of excellence that exists here."

Do you know someone who out performs other retailers and who consistently exceeds customer expectations? Anyone may nominate a retailer and retailers may nominate themselves. The Call for Entries for the competition has been extended to February 28th. All organisations within a 10 miles radius of Haverhill, including Clare, are invited to enter.
Winners will receive widespread publicity, a prestigious award and be honoured at a Gala Ball on 21st May 2005.
Entry forms can be downloaded from www.haverhillchamber.co.uk or obtained from The Arts Centre, Haverhill.
Enquiries to Jason Fitzpatrick: 01440 709794 or Charmaine Symonds: 01440 707717.

Lloyds TSB Corporate have become the second major bank to take up a sponsorship package in the Haverhill Chamber Business Awards 2005. Lloyds have decided to demonstrate their confidence in the town’s business by sponsoring the ‘Export Achievement Award’. This Award is open to all companies, within a 10 miles radius of Haverhill, who have actively exported abroad for at least two years, as at 30th July 2004.
Such a high profile sponsor is excellent news for the large numbers of companies in the area, which enjoy healthy, export figures.

Paul Donno, Haverhill Chamber Chair said, "This Award will focus the spotlight on organisations, which are successfully opening and retaining new markets in the global arena. These companies consistently reach the highest standards of business excellence in order to achieve in such a lively and competitive environment."

Mike Denning of Lloyds TSB Corporate stated, "Given our comprehensive and sophisticated range of international services, Lloyds TSB Corporate is delighted to sponsor the Export Achievement Award. We continue to work with local companies across a range of industry sectors that are either trading successfully in, or wish to trade in, international markets."

Lloyds TSB will join an ever-increasing list of sponsors who are helping to highlight business in the town through sponsorship of the Awards. These include BT, Barclays Bank, Vibe FM, Carisbrooke Alliance and Haverhill’s own IFF, Risk & Safety Solutions and Printwise.

The call for entries and nominations for the Awards has now begun. Organisations can enter on their own behalf or can be nominated for entry. Entry forms can be completed online or downloaded from the Chamber website on www.haverhillchamber.co.uk

Lord Sainsbury, Minister for Science and Innovation, when opening the new Sigma-Genosys site last year, commented: “I have known Haverhill for forty years and forty years ago you would not have described it as a dynamic or very high-tech area. You would have described it as the opposite. This is very exciting for Haverhill. It is expanding in exactly the right direction.”

Now, just a few months later, Sigma-Genosys have clearly demonstrated their commitment to the town, through their decision to sponsor the ‘Business of the Year’ category in Haverhill’s inaugural Business Awards.

Jonathan Pierce, Head of Sigma-Genosys’ operations in Europe, said: “ Sigma-Genosys is a global leader in the manufacture of speciality products for the molecular biology market. It is part of Sigma-Aldrich Corporation a leading Life Science and High Technology company.

”Following our move to Haverhill just over a year ago we have continued to thrive and see our business grow. With Cambridge on our doorstep we recognise the importance of promoting Haverhill businesses to ensure that we retain and attract the local talent. The HCCI Business Awards is an ideal opportunity to increase Sigma-Genosys exposure within the local community and also recognise those companies who have demonstrated excellence. Sigma-Genosys is very proud to sponsor the Business of the Year Award.”

The company have recently joined the Haverhill Chamber of Commerce and HR Officer, Gina Bognanno, will be playing an active role in organising the Awards Ceremony and Gala Ball on May 21st.

Chamber representative, Charmaine Symonds said: “ We are delighted that Sigma Genosys, a company that has after all only been in the town a number of months, should have sufficient faith and confidence in Haverhill to sponsor such an important award.

“Sigma Genosys is an example of an organisation that doesn’t just take from the community. They also give back with both their financial support and with time. They are a dynamic company, with an excellent reputation in their field.

“As Lord Sainsbury said, we are living through exciting times in Haverhill. The Chamber believes that it is exactly right that a company of Sigma’s calibre and vitality should be at the heart of these developments.”
The ‘Business of the Year’ Award is open to all organisations from both the private and public sector, from small private companies to multi-nationals. The judging panel will be looking for evidence of all-round business excellence and outstanding performance.
Winners will receive widespread publicity, a prestigious award and be honoured at a Gala Ball on 21st May 2005.

The Haverhill Business Awards have been designed by the Haverhill Chamber to showcase the brightest and best of the area’s businesses and recognise those companies, organisations and individuals who help to put the town and district on the economic map of the eastern region. The scheme has been a tremendous success with over 100 organisations in the Haverhill area receiving nominations. Finalists in each category will be announced in April. The highlight and culmination of the business awards programme will be the presentation of the twelve awards at a Gala Ball to be held on May 21st 2005. Here, winners will each receive one of these exclusive awards, conceived and produced in Haverhill, which have attracted so much attention in recent months.

The Haverhill Business Award has been described as an icon for our times. Dazzling with light and vitality, it possesses an ethereal quality, which is singularly arresting.

The award is the product of a unique partnership between two Haverhill companies, one young, using new technology, and the other long established in the area, casting metal through traditional methods. The exceptionally talented and innovative Pure Energy Multimedia worked closely with the highly regarded and internationally acclaimed Taylor’s Foundry to create a design tour de force.

The Award is eleven inches high, cast in solid aluminium and gold in colour.

The image, upon which the award is based, was originally fashioned by Robert Connor, a Sixth Form student from Haverhill’s Castle Manor Upper School. Robert won a competition for local schools to design an appropriate logo for the new Chamber, following its launch in February 2004.

Pure Energy then worked with Robert’s design to create the Haverhill Chamber logo, as it exists today. Inspired by the ethos behind the Business Awards initiative, they applied their vision once again and transformed the logo into a three dimensional image. It was then passed on to Taylor’s Foundry to render the visual idea into material being.

The result represents a successful fusion of orthodox and innovatory knowledge, skills and expertise, and in one sense symbolises Haverhill embracing the future through a synthesis of industry and technology.

The award resonates with an inner energy, suggesting movement and fluidity. It appears to flow forward with an impetus of its own, thus emulating the spirit of enterprise that now exists in Haverhill’s business community.

Its beauty and what it signifies in terms of validation will ensure winning one of these awards will come to mean more than a brief moment in the spotlight. Essentially, it will remind winners of how their business fits into the general pattern of excellence, which Haverhill can produce.

The inaugural Haverhill Business Awards, the ultimate recognition of excellence and innovation in the Haverhill area, will take place on 21st May 2005 at Chilford Hall, Linton. If you would like to be there to congratulate the winners, meet the area’s brightest and best and dance the night away, make sure you book your place now. Ring Diana on 01440 707184 or book online at www.haverhillchamber.co.uk