Acorn lifts two UK export awards in one week

Steeton-based Acorn Stairlifts has been presented with the Made in the UK award for exports by a representative of the Government’s UK Trade & Investment department. Having won the Made in Yorkshire Export Award last year, Acorn automatically went through to the national final where it came out victorious against the winners from seven other regions.

The award was collected from Kevin McGlone of UKTI at St George’s Hall in Liverpool by Andrew Longthorne and Allison Wear, Acorn’s Factory Managers at their Steeton and Shipley respectively.

In the last five years, Acorn has invested more than £8m in new plant and machinery and their factories now manufacture over one million components each year. The judges were especially impressed by the 80% increase in the value of Acorn’s exports during the three years from 2011 to 2014, and with the fact that that every  9 minutes, an Acorn Stairlift is installed somewhere in the world.

Also last week, Acorn which exports nearly £80m of stairlifts from its UK factories, was named in The Sunday Times HSBC International Track 200 as one of Britain’s top 200 private companies with the fastest-growing international sales.

“Acorn only sells stairlifts,” said company secretary Dave Belmont, “We are the largest dedicated manufacturer of stairlifts in the world – based here in West Yorkshire.”

Picture, from the left: Allison Wear, Acorn’s Factory Manager in Shipley; Andrew Longthorne, Acorn’s Factory Manager in Steeton; and Kevin McGlone of UKTI.

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