RPC : Strata Receives Royal Approval

RPC Group company Strata Products has received a Queen's Award for Enterprise, the UK's highest accolade for business success. The company was recognised in the category of international trade.

The honour comes after Strata steadily built up its export sales, leading to an increase in overseas earnings of 132% over the last three years. The majority of these sales have been to Northern Europe - mainly France, Germany, and the Benelux region - but the company has also enjoyed success further afield, including in Australia, Japan, South Korea and South Africa.

'We are delighted and thrilled to receive this prestigious award,' said Jay Ilsen, Sales Director at Strata. 'It's a great testament to the hard work of everyone here, and it's fantastic that our success in this area has been recognised.

'It's a great source of pride at Strata that the products we make in our factory in Nottinghamshire are being shipped all over the world, and that we are able to demonstrate that certain areas of British manufacturing are not only still alive and well, but are thriving and competitive in a global marketplace.'

Based in Nottinghamshire, Strata manufactures a wide range of products - including for the Home and Offi ce, Garden and Baby markets - for clients both in the UK and worldwide. It is one of the UK's major suppliers of watering cans, water butts, compost bins, decorative planters and growing accessories, and the UK's leading supplier of Baby Bath Time products. Strata became part of the RPC Group in November 2015.

'We believe that the key to our success has been working hard, staying lean, and developing good quality niche products - like our decorative garden planters and our large heavy duty storage trunks, which help differentiate us in what is a crowded market,' said Jay Ilsen. 'We are able to offer our overseas customer base unique quality products not widely available from their own local sources - at prices as competitive as anywhere in the world.'