STAFF at a Highbridge business are celebrating after the company scooped up its second award in five years.

Jo Bird won The Queen's Award for Enterprise in Innovation after staff redesigned and manufactured a fire safety cabinet which saves lives by protecting essential fire and safety equipment in hazardous environments.

The company, which specialises in the design and manufacture of storage cabinets, won the award five years to the day they won their first Queen's Award for Enterprise in International Trade.

Councillor Anne Fraser MBE, portfolio holder for economic growth at Sedgemoor District Council, said: “Not only have Jo Bird used the latest technology in designing this fire safety cabinet, which will be an addition to their products already available on the global market, but they have also doubled their productivity on this product whilst up-skilling their workforce. "To receive the accolade of The Queen’s Award for Enterprise in Innovation is richly deserved and Sedgemoor are proud to have such an aspirational and successful company in their district.”

The company, which is based on Factory Lane, exports its products across the world to over 30 different countries.

Guy Atkins, managing director of Jo Bird, said developing the cabinet wasn't an easy feat.

“The biggest difficulty we had was with production. When we started running the process, there were high occurrences of defects and scraps. "I enrolled on a mentoring scheme run by the National Composites Centre to improve my composites knowledge.

“We decided to sponsor an Engineering Doctorate (EngD) student through the University of Bristol to overcome the production issues and to transfer knowledge to the company’s staff.”

After the sponsorship ended in 2015, graduate engineer Laxman Sivanathan joined the team at Jo Bird and quickly got to work making changes to reduce the cost of the cabinet.

“Despite being a small company with around 20 full time staff, we decided that working with Bristol University’s Industrial Doctorate Centre (IDC) in Composites Manufacture and sponsoring Laxman Sivanathan would fast-forward the uptake of new technology and materials, accelerate R&D, and increase knowledge transfer to our staff. I am delighted that this has proved to be very successful.”

"Being successful in winning a second Queen’s Award for Enterprise is a huge achievement and could not have happened without the ambition, determination and hard work of our staff and particularly Laxman Sivanathan.”