Harvey Water Softeners has been chosen by Her Majesty The Queen as the winner of The Queens Award for Enterprise in Innovation 2018.
The family-run manufacturing firm has been awarded the UK’s most prestigious business award for its innovation of the first compact, non-electric block softener.
Invented by Harvey Bowden, the softener was the first designed to fit under a kitchen sink with two cylinders that allowed for continuous softening.
This year is the 52nd year of the Queens Awards, which are announced on April 21st to mark the birthday of Her Majesty The Queen.
Founder of Harvey Water Softeners, Harvey Bowden, commented: “This is amazing. When my wife Ann bought a water softener 43 years ago I never expected to end up with an award from HM The Queen. It’s wonderful. Our first goal was just to earn a living, then to make a better water softener and finally to build the best water softener in the world. We have a wonderful family company of people here and it’s a pleasure to work with them all. Thank you your Majesty!”
As well as recognising the significance of this invention to the water softening industry, The Queens Award was presented to Harvey on the back of the company’s recent sales growth.
The Woking-based firm reported sales of £26.5m in the 12 months to December 2017, a 25% increase on the year before as a recent multi-million pound R&D investment programme helped to increase factory output by a third (28%).
Managing director of Harvey Water Softeners, Martin Hurworth, added: “40 years on, we’re growing faster than ever, breaking factory records for numbers of softeners made and modernising our business to meet growing consumer demand. We’ve invested in our people, our products and our production lines and that’s really showing through in our sales figures, staff and customer satisfaction and our burgeoning reputation as a great British manufacturing business.”
