Winning a Queen’s Award is the ultimate accolade for any British manufacturing company. London based Sortex Ltd, a world leader in optical sorting machinery for the food processing industry, has now achieved this distinction five times after gaining a Queen’s Award for International Trade 2005. 

This is the fourth time that the company has received the award since 1968 – in 2001 it was also received for Innovation. It is the third year in succession that its hugely successful export programme has been recognised by rigorous external assessment. In 2003 it won the London Chamber of Commerce Exporter of the Year title – a success it repeated at the highly respected National Business Awards 2004.

Managing Director Bruno Kilshaw is delighted but not complacent. “We work in many highly competitive international markets and have to rely on skills that go far beyond technological competence – coping with volatile exchange rates and understanding the intricacies of international marketing, for example.

“We export around 98 per cent of our production to 43 countries and much of our success is attributable to our highly trained locally based personnel who understand local conditions and help our UK based people to empathise with the cultural diversity of the markets in which we operate. To win in international markets, just as in domestic ones, it is vital always to think of ‘you’ rather than ‘we’.”

Sortex commits itself to intensive R&D investment. The most recent breakthrough is its Z Anywhere software, which enables sophisticated remote diagnostics and programming to be implemented easily wherever there is a telephone connection and a PC or laptop.

The company has trebled turnover in the last decade but Kilshaw is not resting on his laurels. “Winning something as important as the Queen’s Award is a wonderful morale booster. Everyone at Sortex wants to do it again…and again.”

Sortex, based in London, is a member of the Swiss Buhler Group. Buhler is a global Technology Group and the system partner for plant, equipment, and process know-how in Food Processing, Chemical Process Engineering, and Die Casting, with about 6100 employees worldwide and a turnover of 1,5 billion Swiss Francs.