GILLIAN FURMAGE
Loch Fyne Oysters have good reason to celebrate after receiving the UK's highest accolade for business success.
The company earned a Queen's Award for Enterprise in recognition of its achievements in international trade.
Loch Fyne Oysters was founded in 1978 with two only employees in Argyll, on the Ardkinglas Estate at Cairndow. It now employs over 130 people locally and supplies seafood to major hotel groups, airlines, and restaurants as well as its own retail customers through the Deli, Oyster Bar & Restaurant and Mail order service based at Cairndow.
Over the past three years the company has recorded exceptional overseas growth, achieving exports in excess of £3.8million in 2013 to Europe, the Middle East, Asia, Africa and the Americas, all while providing excellent local produce here in Scotland.
Sales director Simon Briggs commented: "Winning the Queen's Award is a pinnacle achievement for the company and a personal highlight of the 15 years I have been working at Loch Fyne. I have just returned from Asia's biggest food and hotel trade event in Singapore where the strength of our brand in the Far East has never been clearer."
"The award is an acknowledgment of the effort put in by everyone at Loch Fyne Oysters to ensure the best possible product and service are supplied to our customers all over the world, who have shown their appreciation by their custom and loyalty."
This is the second time Loch Fyne has won the award. In 1994 founder Johnny Noble journeyed to Buckingham Palace to collect the honour and since then the company's already stellar reputation has continued to improve.
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