At BusinessLive we love hearing from the young people who are transforming the business world.
And at the awards events we ran across the country in 2022 we honoured young entrepreneurs and apprentices who are making a real difference to their businesses and their communities.
Our parent company Reach plc ran business awards events acrross the country in partnership with BusinessLive and our network of Live sites. We honoured businesses of all shapes and sizes, old and new – and also looked to honour the stars of the future.
We’ve looked back at some of our events to showcase some of the winners from 2022 – working in fields from house music to sports and from cookery to healthcare.
Liverpool – Antony Craven, House Essential Records
Winner of the Young Business Person of the Year category at the Regional Business Awards from the Liverpool ECHO and BusinessLive for 2022
Antony launched House Essential Records, which specialises in house and dance music, when he was just 22.
The “boutique” label focuses on promoting new artists and promotes a limited number of releases each year. Its work has seen it win support from some of the biggest names in the dance world, including MK and Tiësto.
In an interview last year, the label explained: “We have worked with several artists who were at the start of their musical careers, and we could hear that their music had potential, it’s really rewarding and exciting to see how they develop as artists along with us as a label.”
West Midlands – Summar Wilkes
Winner of Apprentice of the Year and Health, Education and Care and Apprentice of the Year at the Greater Birmingham Apprenticeship Awards 2022
Summar Wilkes is a young dental nurse who was crowned Apprentice of the Year at the Greater Birmingham Apprenticeship Awards in November.
She works at Smile Style Dental Care Centre in Stafford where she is also studying for a dental nursing apprenticeship and took home the Health, Education and Care category before being picked ahead of the five other individual winners to be crowned overall Apprentice of the Year.
The 18 year old impressed judges with the way she had managed her diary to continue her work and studies alongside being a home carer for her mother.
The panel said she showed exceptional maturity for someone so young and she was a credit to her employer.
Leicestershire – Nigel Smith
Winner of the Young Businessperson of the Year (aged 30 and under) category at the LeicestershireLive Business Awards
The winner of the 2022 Young Businessperson of the Year (aged 30 and under) – sponsored by De Montfort University – was Nigel Smith of Complete Detection Systems.
The business provides life and fire safety equipment across the region and Nigel, its bid and tender manager, has been key to the transformation of the business in recent months.
Following the October awards, Nigel said: “Absolutely honoured to have won the Young Business Person of the Year award last night at the Leicestershire Live Business Awards.
“Congrats to the other finalists Melvin Riley and Taylor Gee, both of whom deserve recognition for their hard work.
“Congratulations as well to all of the other great Leicestershire Businesses last night and to LeicestershireLive for a wonderful night.”
Complete Detection Systems was also named 2022 Property and Construction Business of the Year.
Managing director Simon Able said: “Nigel has been an amazing addition to our company and has fundamentally changed the way we manage our public sector contracts.
“Nigel now manages the bids for our water hygiene, electrical compliance, fire alarm, and life safety divisions across the UK. This keeps him exceptionally busy, and makes him an integral part of each division’s senior management team.”
Lincolnshire – Josh Illsley
Winner of the Young Achiever of the Year category at the Lincolnshire Live Business Awards 2022
It was announced in 2021 that Josh Illsley would head up Running Imp as its new CEO.
The business specialises in medals, signs, promotional products and other materials to organisers of running and other mass participation events.
Josh began working at Running Imp in the mid-2010s as its operations coordinator, rapidly expanding his knowledge of the business and experience leading a large team.
In 2018, he was promoted to operations manager, taking further responsibility for its growing warehouse operations and extensive product selection.
In late 2019, he was promotion to operations director and the board of directors was set, thanks to what the business called “his incredible performance during 2018”.
He took over from his dad, CEO and founder Chris Illsley BEM, who collected the 2022 LincolnshireLive Lifetime Achievement Award.
Gloucestershire – James Markey, Nutrition X
Winner of the Young Business Person of the Year at the GloucestershireLive Business Awards 2022
James Markey’s company works with an impressive roster of elite-level athletes and clubs, and counts Scotland Rugby, the English Institute of Sport, Hintsa (Formula 1), Blackburn Rovers and Gloucester Rugby among its current club partners.
The 34-year-old entrepreneur was inspired to set up the business after becoming a victim of a random attack that resulted in a brain haemorrhage while on his gap year in Australia. To support his recovery, he turned to nutrition and exercise.
Nutrition X was established in 2014 from James’s bedroom at his parent’s house.
Fast forward to 2022, and the company employs 10 staff and has just enjoyed its largest turnover year to date, nearing the £1m mark at £898,946 (March 2021- 2022). That’s growth of 54% in the past 12 months alone. The past few months have also seen him secure the company its first international distributor in the UAE, alongside setting up Nutrition X’s first ever office outside of UK shores, over in Ireland.
Swansea – Alex Coldea
Winner of the Young Business Person of the Year category at the Swansea Bay Business Awards 2022
As we reported in September, Romanian-born Alex is a Swansea University computer science graduate turned entrepreneur as chief executive of Swansea-based tech firm Dill (trading name).
Dill’s tech allows students and staff to skip queues at university canteens. However, the start-up continues to build new software markets around catering automation – including a food safety, allergen and food labelling product in partnership with Brother, the hardware company. The Dill print platform enables clients to print product and allergen labels on-demand.
It has also started working with restaurants in London, bakeries, supermarkets and we’re about to launch now in a few major British chains.
Manchester – Katie McIntosh (The Remedy Kitchen)
Winner of the Young Business Person of the Year category at the Manchester Evening News Business Awards 2022
Katie McIntosh founded The Remedy Kitchen, billed as “Manchester’s first and only exclusively gluten, dairy and refined sugar free restaurant