Deputy Minister for Regeneration, Leighton Andrews has presented prizes to the three winners of the inaugural Social Enterprise Awards Wales which were held at the Wales Millennium Centre to mark Social Enterprise Day.
The Centre for Alternative Technology, Machynlleth was victorious in the Best Social Enterprise (turnover of £1 million plus) while Cardiff based firms Pack-It Promotions, and Cycle Training Wales were named Best Social Enterprise (turnover of less than £1 million) and Best New Social Enterprise (operating for less than three years) respectively.
The Welsh winners will now represent the nation at the UK Social Enterprise Awards which will be held on December 3rd and decided by an online public vote.
The Deputy Minister said:
“I congratulate all three companies on their achievements today and those throughout the year that have led to their awards. They have beaten off very stiff competition, not least from the other finalists, and it is testament to the calibre of the Social Enterprise sector in Wales that we had such strong competition in all three categories. We have a long and successful history of social businesses in Wales and it gives me great pleasure to see that we also have a bright and promising future.
“Next year the Social Enterprise Sector’s main UK conference Voice 10 will be held in Cardiff for the first time and I am delighted that Wales will be able to showcase these and many other innovative and thriving Social Enterprises to the rest of the UK. It would give me even greater pleasure if we could showcase these organisations as winners of the UK Social Enterprise Awards and so I would like to wish them the very best of luck for the final next month.”
The UK competition will be decided by a public online vote which will be open from November 20th – 30th on the Social Enterprise Awards website. In addition to the three categories there will also be an award for Social Enterprise of the Year.
