Enworks scoops prestigious European award

ENWORKS Programmes Director Sam Nicholson

A prestigious European award was presented to North West-based ENWORKS at a ceremony in Brussels last week (Thursday 31 January).

The environmental support service, which helps businesses in the North West save money by reducing their carbon emissions, scooped a RegioStar award in the sustainable growth category.

ENWORKS have helped save North West businesses a cumulative £145million to date by improving the efficiency of their resources.

Among the companies to have benefitted from their support is INX International UK Ltd, a Rochdale company supplying ink for printing on cans.

Heywood’s York House Surgery has also saved over £6,000 through support from ENWORKS.

In total, ENWORKS has helped over 200 small-medium enterprises in Rochdale in partnership with Groundworks Oldham and Rochdale.

Organised by the European Commission, RegioStar awards are seen as highly prestigious and ENWORKS beat off competition from Denmark, Netherlands and two European-wide projects to come out on top.

Programmes Director Sam Nicholson said: “Winning the RegioStar Sustainable Growth award is testament to all the hard work that everyone across our partnership has put in over the last eleven years.”

“We hope that winning this award will provide a springboard to encourage others to replicate our success across Europe.

“We look forward to sharing the lessons we’ve learned to enable others to reproduce our success as quickly and as widely as possible.

“Business support on resource efficiency provides a significant return on investment to the public purse and helps us move towards our shared goal of avoiding dangerous climate change and growing the economy.”

The award was given to the company for their Resource Efficiency Support programme, with judges praising their innovation.

“It exemplifies effective public-private co-operation in the field of information,” they added.

After collecting the award on stage at the Palais des Beauz-Arts in the Belgian capital, Ms Nicholson explained the secret behind the company’s success. 

“Most importantly probably, we ask ourselves the question every day ‘so what?’ - we focus on the impact not just the process,” she said.

Joanne Turnbull, European Regional Development Fund Contract Monitoring Manager for the company, collected the award with Ms Nicholson.

She told European Commission guests the award was not just a cause of celebration to ENWORKS, but to the whole of North West England.

“It’s very important for the region,” she said.

“The managing authority thinks it is very significant. It’s giving great recognition to the project.”