FINALISTS: Lancashire Directors of the Year
Lancashire Director of the Year
Tony Attard is founder/CEO of Panaz, specialists in flame retardant contract fabrics. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, an associate of the Institute of Textiles, a member of the Institute of Management and past-Chairman of the BCFA, Tony has received accolades from the Design Council, DTI, UMIST and the Queen’s Awards office.
David Jones, CEO of Invotec Group joined the Printed Circuit Board Industry in 1990 starting at Exacta Circuits in Scotland as the Operations Director for seven years, before moving to Forward Circuits in Tamworth as Managing Director. This followed a move to Viasystems Inc as European Quality Director until 2001 where he led the MBO from Viasystems to form Invotec Group – now the largest PCB manufacturer in the UK and in April this year were listed at No22 in the Sunday Times PWC Profit Track 100 league table.
Richard Tang founded Zen Internet in 1995 with a few thousand pounds start-up capital and 4 staff. Zen provides broadband Internet access and related services to business customers and now turns over £25m and employs 210 staff. The company is profitable and continues to grow in a highly competitive market.
Lancashire Young Director of the Year
Helen Colley launched Farmhouse Fare Ltd in 2002, which makes premium puddings and chilled deserts for supermarkets and specialist shops. The last four years have seen a fledgling idea grow into a thriving business. Helen (Founder and Managing Director) now employs 70 staff with 45 products currently being produced – and the imminent launch of 27 new ones in September alone. Farmhouse Fare Ltd supplies all of the major supermarkets with top quality food, made by using the finest ingredients to traditional methods. Both Helen and Farmhouse Fare Ltd are proven award-winners, and have recently won The Credit Suisse Entrepreneur of the Year Award and the AXA Small to Medium Sized Business of the Year at the National Business Awards Regional Programme 2006.
Looking for new ideas in New York in 1999, Mark Mills stumbled upon a Cash Machine and Cardpoint was born. Cardpoint now operates 5,000 Cash Machines in the UK, 600 in the Netherlands and Germany having acquired the Cash Machines estates of Green Machine, Securicor, HBOS and Moneybox plc for £87.3m. Cardpoint’s market capitalisation is now approaching £100m with turnover of over £60m for the year ended September 2005 and market forecasts projecting turnover to September 2006 of £100m. The company is based in Lancashire and employs 220 staff in the UK, Netherlands and Germany.
Ges Ratcliffe is the CEO of Debtmatters Group plc, a provider of debt solutions to the over indebted consumer. The business was established in 2003 and floated on AIM in 2005. Now boasting around 270 employees it has an expected turnover for the current financial year approaching £30million.
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