MIRA Technology Park Win UK’s Most Prestigious Business Award
Technology Park awarded Queen’s Award for Enterprise under the category of International Trade for outstanding continuous growth of overseas sales
MIRA Technology Park, the UK’s leading automotive technology park and Enterprise Zone, has become part of an elite group of businesses, winning the ‘International Trade’ award at the prestigious Queen’s Awards 2018.
The International Trade accolade is part of the Queen’s Awards for Enterprise. Its stringent criteria means only the top performing businesses are put forward for the global award and to become eligible UK businesses must, over a period of six-years, demonstrate steep year-on-year growth without dips in overseas sales, relative to business size and sector.
In this period, MIRA Technology Park has been able to demonstrate long-term growth of international sales. Since 2012, over 77% of the park’s gross revenue is classified as Foreign Direct Investment (FDI). This income is generated from the commercial rent international companies pay, covering the space and use of the park’s technical services, supporting tenants’ research and development operations.
Since winning the award, Dr George Gillespie OBE, CEO at HORIBA MIRA, said:
“We are absolutely delighted and deeply honoured to have won such a prestigious award. The Queen’s Awards for Enterprise highlights everything that’s great about UK business today. I’m extremely proud of what the team have achieved with MIRA Technology Park, in particular from an FDI perspective, attracting some truly great international automotive companies to establish their EU R&D operations on the park. We still have a long journey ahead, but the growth achieved so far has been consistently strong and it is very pleasing for our achievements to be recognised in this way.
“We are confident that with the Queens Award for Enterprise, our growing international reputation and the continued investment we make in the park, our appeal to international businesses will only strengthen. We are always looking to enhance the inward investment proposition as more and more international automotive companies look to establish a technical presence in the UK.”
MIRA Technology Park is renowned for its excellent research and development facilities, with many international automotive firms basing themselves on-site to establish a technical presence in the UK. Ultimately this has created a significant automotive ‘technology cluster’, with over 1,200 employees across 40 companies from fifteen countries, all benefitting from access to the cutting-edge facilities and engineering services. These tenants include, Jaguar Land Rover (JLR), Toyota, Bosch, Clearmotion, Aston Martin, Bentley, Haldex, Intrepid Control Systems and Bharat Forge.
MIRA Technology Park continues to demonstrate its capability, with constant innovation and development of market-leading facilities to support key emerging technologies like vehicle electrification, connectivity, autonomy and resilience. The award for International Trade confirms the reality of HORIBA MIRA’s aim to create Europe’s largest automotive technology-centric research and development location.
MIRA Technology Park is wholly owned and operates under HORIBA MIRA Ltd. The technology park leverages its extensive research and development, engineering and test facilities and considerable staff expertise.
