Adhesives company wins its fifth Queen’s Award

The company makes hot melt adhesives, which are involved in sticking almost anything together from labels on jars and bottles to wood panels and car trim. It develops and manufactures products specifically to meet customer needs and seventy per cent of its output is exported, which is why the Queen's Award is for International Trade. Beardow Adams is hardly a household name but it is almost certain that some of their products are in your house right now. Commenting on the award, Nick Beardow, the company's sales and marketing director said: "It's a great boost for our 85 staff and something they richly deserve. [We] started 35 years ago and to win our fifth Queen's Award in that time and have a turnover of £50 million shows that we must be doing something right." The company sells to some big names including Coca Cola, Nestlé, Colgate and Unilever. Its glues are claimed to be more efficient and environmentally friendly than traditional products and can be used in extremes of temperature and humidity. Hot melt adhesives work by being applied in liquid form and hardening as they cool, sometimes in less than a second. This makes using them in production processes much less time consuming than glues which have to dry out to work. Last year Beardow Adams was named one of the UK's one hundred fastest growing companies, partly as a result of their successful expansion into markets as far afield as Australia, Chile and South Africa.