A royal date for Andy

More than 40 years of loyal service has earned a Greatham man an invitation to Buckingham Palace next week (Tuesday July 12th).

Andy Gullon works for Johnson Matthey’s Tracerco business in Billingham and has been invited to the Palace to formally mark the company’s success in the recent Queen’s Award for Enterprise 2005.

Management at the firm decided to reward Andy for his good service and nominated him to receive an invitation to the prestigious event.

Andy, who has never met a member of the Royal family before, is thrilled with his invitation. “I am really looking forward to it – especially meeting the Queen. It’s a great honour to be invited and I’m very proud to be attending as a Tracerco employee.”

Tracerco managing director Andy Hurst added: “Winning the Queen’s Award is a tremendous achievement – a royal seal of approval for our business and employees. The award recognises the efforts of every single member of staff at Tracerco and we felt that Andy, as a well known and valued employee, would be ideal to represent Tracerco at the event.”

The Queen’s Awards for Enterprise are the UK’s most prestigious awards for business performance. The awards are made each year by the Queen, on the advice of the Prime Minister and industry, commerce and the trade unions.

Tracerco, a global oil and gas service provider, was awarded the Queen’s Award for Enterprise 2005 in the International Trade category in April this year. The award, which is given to only a small number of companies nationwide, is in recognition of outstanding export and growth in sales over the past three years.

Tracerco exports its range of products and services into all of the key oil, gas and petrochemical markets globally from its headquarters in Teesside. In the past three years, it has exported to international markets such as Brazil, Nigeria, China, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, the Middle East and throughout South East Asia.