Date: Mon 5th October, 2009
Venue:
Number of Guests Attended: 80
Huddersfield's VTL Group proved that engineering is still alive and well in Yorkshire despite the downturn as the precision components business scooped the top award at Insider Growth 100 lunch at Thorpe Park Hotel in Leeds.
Receiving our ‘gold medal' award for the most outstanding performance over the past year, managing director Bruno Jouan also confirmed the company's plans to open its next factory near Mumbai in India next year were well on track.
"We are responding to our customers and southern India is very much a hub for the export of automotive components in the Far East." Jouan, who led a buyout of the business in 2001, revealed that he was also looking at a possible factory on the West coast of China. "If we move into China we would be responding more to their domestic market."
Given its global ambitions VTL also picked up our International Award, while the Rising Star award went to meter specialist Northern Design Electronics, and the Innovation prize to steel framing business Bankside Patterson. The Business Leadership award went to Tony Veverka of eye surgery group Ultralase, while the Growth 100 title went to Eterniti Steels.
Entrepreneur Deirdre Bounds was a guest speaker at the event and warned Yorkshire's fastest growing companies of the dangers of complacency. She said it was too easy to make mistakes when times were good. "You think anything is possible. How many times have we seen businesses grow too fast and then fall?"
All the companies were listed in Insider's ranking of the fastest growing companies in Yorkshire in the September issue of Yorkshire Business Insider.
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