Winners of both the Manufacturer of the Region and the prestigious Energy and Sustainability Awards for the North East, Yorkshire and Humber, Lionweld Kennedy will now go forward to the National Make UK Awards which will be held at St Paul’s Cathedral at the end of January 2024.
Designed to recognise a range of achievements across the UK Manufacturing industry including growth, talent, wellbeing, innovation and environmental performance, the Make UK Manufacturing awards are open to all UK manufacturers and their supply chains and are regarded by many in the industry as a mark of quality.
Steve Brooke, commercial director at Lionweld Kennedy said: “We are obviously delighted and very proud to be announced as the winner of both these awards. For Lionweld Kennedy to be presented as Manufacturer of the Region and to win the Energy and Sustainability Award is a real accolade for the business and, for us, acknowledges the sheer hard work, commitment and investment we have made in our people, premises and processes over the last year.
"Lionweld Kennedy has an ambitious business strategy and, as part of this, we are absolutely committed to continuing to grow our profitability, pursue organic growth, continue the investment in our staff, plant and resources and to achieve all of this under the umbrella of reaching a target of net zero by 2040.
"The Energy and Sustainability award, in particular, recognises the enormous inroads we have made in working towards this business objective and hitting our decarbonisation targets.”
The sustainability outcomes recognised by the judges, and which contributed to Lionweld’s award win, included:
- The company’s installation of 650 solar panels at its Middlesbrough manufacturing facility
- The switch to a fleet of fully electric forklift trucks
- The move to a factory heated solely by Hydrogenated Vegetable Oil (HVO)
- The switch to a 100% green electricity tariff
- The rationalisation of product range and;
- The introduction of a remote energy monitoring system identifying in real time areas of energy waste combined with traceability software to ensure robustness of data.
To date these measures have seen the Lionweld Kennedy business, in only one year, reduce its total annual carbon impact from 667 tonnes of CO2 in 2021, to 150 tonnes of CO2 in 2022 and with a forecast to have carbon impact under 100 tonnes of CO2e this year.
The business will now compete with other regional winners in London for the National Energy and Sustainability title.
Formed in 1910, Lionweld Kennedy designs, manufactures and installs steel and Glass Reinforced Plastic (GRP) flooring, handrails, stair treads and access solutions to a range of industries including data centres, energy, construction, rail, utilities and mining. The business is headquartered in Middlesbrough - where it was originally formed - and is part of Hill and Smith PLC.