Neat Concepts Ltd, a London-based manufacturer of “flexible” MDF, has won a Queen’s Award for Enterprise (International Trade) 2003.
The award, for “outstanding export achievements”, is the Edmonton company’s second major accolade in two years, following TTJ’s Small Timber Business of the Year 2001. The achievement was particularly noteworthy because this year’s event featured the lowest number of exporter winners since 1974 – just 62 UK companies.
Neat Concepts chairman Philip Brading, who was congratulated by the Duke of York at a London reception held for winners on April 22, said the award was a “tremendous accolade”.
Mr Brading gave up his merchant banker job in 1995, along with John Beaugié who left his work as an NHS consultant surgeon, to concentrate on Neat Concepts, the sign board business they had started in 1984.
The business really took off when Charles Simpson, then of William T Eden, suggested Neat Concepts cut deeper grooves in MDF boards both crossways and lengthways to produce a flexible product which was UK sized. Until then flexible panels were only being produced in Germany.
Mr Beaugié, the managing director, made a machine to cut the grooves, and the “bendy MDF” Neatform product was born. Now it is being distributed across Europe, the US and Canada for end uses including curved reception disks and columns.
The company expects to receive its award in the coming weeks.
