O
AWARD HOLDERS 2021 - 2024
JST Services Group is an Ayr-based logistics company active in the port services sector. It provides operations at ports throughout the United Kingdom and Ireland. The company is particularly active in delivering asset-based logistic solutions to the forest sector, and its innovation of Mobile Floating Piers has enabled large capacity cargo ships to berth directly adjacent to remote forests. This innovation uses short-sea coastal shipping to open new markets and create value for Scottish forest owners, whilst at the same time keeping HGV lorries off tourist roads. With a network of three Mobile Floating Piers, JST’s technology has generated the economies of scale that enables Scottish logs to move from estates in the remote Highlands to markets in the central belt, Southern Ireland and South Wales. Employing 63 people, JST Services (Scotland) Ltd was founded in 1993, developing a separate Floating Piers division in 2008. JST’s Floating Piers are part of the company’s wider drive towards enabling UK industries to move towards Net Zero. Each cargo ship loaded at one of JST’s Mobile Floating Piers removes some 200 HGV truck journeys from Scotland’s rural roads. In its wider business the company facilitates UK exporters and importers to bring their products much closer to JST Services Group
the point of consumption by using coastal cargo ships calling at small ports and wharves to avoid excessive road use. Richard Jennings, Managing Director of JST Services Group, says: “As a service business, receiving a King’s Award for Innovation is an absolute honour for the company and a huge testament to our employees, partners and customers.” JST SERVICES GROUP Highfield Business Park, St Quivox, Ayr, KA6 5HQ Tel: 01292 262050 • info@jstservicesgroup.com
MRT Castings Ltd
In 2022, MRT Castings was proud to receive the Queen’s Award for Enterprise for the second time in six years. Following its 2016 award for International Trade, MRT had experienced a further period of exceptional growth. MRT produces aluminium diecastings and machined components for a wide range of UK and international customers. These components are used in applications as diverse as hi-fi equipment to supercars, and designer lighting to military control systems. One of the company’s largest markets has been in medical devices, and in particular, critical care ventilators. When the Covid-19 pandemic struck, hospitals around the world were in desperate need of additional ventilators to treat critically ill patients. Since 2014 MRT have worked with one of the world’s leading manufacturers of these ventilators, supplying 21 components in each unit. Prior to the pandemic MRT produced approximately 4,000 kits of these precision engineered components each year, but between April 2020 and March 2021, MRT dramatically scaled up operations to manufacture over 26,000 sets, enabling our customer to supply life-saving ventilators to every corner of the globe. MRT recently celebrated its 75th Anniversary. The family-owned business was originally
established in London, then relocated to its current production base in Hampshire in 1965. They have steadily expanded the scale and complexity of their production facilities over the years, and just prior to the pandemic, opened a new, purpose-built, state-of-the-art diecasting foundry to accommodate future growth. They weren’t expecting to fill it quite so quickly, but with the challenge of rapidly scaling up operations to respond to the Covid-19 crisis, the business invested in additional diecasting cells and CNC machining centres, and almost doubled their workforce, instantly transforming the new foundry into a hive of productivity and innovation. International sales grew by 437% over the three years to 2022, and the proportion of sales exported increased to 85% of total sales.
MRT’s new world-class die-casting foundry
Managing Director, Phil Rawnson, explained “To have won two Queen’s Awards for Enterprise just six years apart is testament to the relentless energy and enthusiasm of our team, and to receive this honour during the company’s 75th anniversary year was particularly special.”
MRT CASTINGS LTD South Way, Walworth Business Park, Andover, Hampshire SP10 5JT Tel: +44 (0)1264 324021 • general@mrt-castings.co.uk www.mrt-castings.co.uk @MRTcastings mrt-castings-ltd
King’s Awards Magazine 2025
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