Steve Brine joined the very best of local business on Friday 14th June as he took part in the presentations at the 2013 Winchester Business Excellence Awards.
Winchester Guildhall hosted the ceremony, which was also addressed by former Bond girl Valerie Leon, who spoke of her memories working with stars such as Sean Connery and Roger Moore.
As ever, there were a number of awards up for grabs, and Steve presented the final award of the evening, the Denplan Business of the Year gong, to forklife truck company Geolift.
In addition, and in a successful night, Geolift founder Craig George also won the University of Winchester Entrepreneur award. Other successes included The Chestnut Horse from Easton, who won two awards, and The Chesil Rectory which won the Winchester Business Improvement District Member of the Year Award, Bluebird Care which won the small business award, and Natural Travel Collection which won the new online experience award.
Speaking afterwards, Steve said: "This event has become such an established feature of the Winchester year and gets bigger and better each year.@ It was a real treat for me to announce the Denplan Business of the Year Award to the Geolift team who, in many ways, typify the local entrepreneurial spirit we do so well.
"We talk much about growth and recovery in Parliament but locally we're just getting on with it. There are of course businesses here that are struggling and must support them where we can but generally speaking it's good to see well-run, efficient small businesses with a positive attitude and optimism about the future. Everyone nominated did us proud."
