A CHIPPING Campden design company has learned this week it has been awarded the Queen's Award for Enterprise.

The team at Robert Welch says it is delighted to be selected as one of the businesses to receive the UK's highest accolade for business success.

The company’s award was received for having increased their year-on-year export sales to the point where they now represent over 40 per cent of annual turnover.

Its cutlery and kitchenware products are now distributed and sold into over 70 countries around the world and can be found in department stores, on the tables of top restaurants, in five star hotels as well as first class cabins of international airlines. The company also sells through its own website robertwelch.com as well as two stores in the UK situated in Chipping Campden and Bath.

“To be part of an elite group of Queen’s Award for Enterprise winners is a real honour for us all at Robert Welch Designs. The significance of this year being the Queen’s 90th birthday only enhances this privilege.” said Rupert Welch, managing director. “I’m immensely proud of this award which is a great tribute to our entire team and just how much meticulous consideration goes into creating, marketing, selling and distributing our products. The award recognizes our talented and committed workforce, and their success with the associated logistics and business challenges involved in strengthening our export market. Every individual at Robert Welch Designs has worked incredibly hard to win this award.”

Robert Welch, the company’s founder, left the Royal College of Art in 1955 and set up a workshop at the Old Silk Mill in Chipping Campden. Since then every single Robert Welch product has been designed in the same building by the in-house design team.

In the early 1990s, Robert Welch invited his daughter Alice and son Rupert to join his small team and help drive the company onwards.

Six decades since the company began, Robert Welch Designs is now an internationally renowned brand with an extensive range of products including the award-winning Signature knife range and over 30 cutlery designs.

“Having been a feature in Chipping Campden for the last six decades, it’s not necessarily known that we run a global business from the top floor of a 200 year old silk mill just off the High Street," “said Alice Welch, deputy managing director.

“In fact we now have a staff of over 60, with logisitcs and warehousing nearby. Product design and development remains in the building where my father Robert started it all in 1955. Having the physical connection with the same building where the company started is immensely important to us as a business and as a family.“

The Queen’s Award for Enterprise will be presented to the company by the Lord Lieutenant of Gloucestershire later in the year.

www.robertwelch.com