Celebrating the Belfast Telegraph Business Award winners
We celebrated the 2024 Belfast Telegraph Business Awards in partnership with Ulster Bank last week. You can read all about the winners and enjoy our great pictures from the event.?Congratulations, everyone, and thank you to Ulster Bank and all our category sponsors - as well as a brilliant panel of judges.
"We are delighted to honours the stars and often unsung heroes of Northern Ireland’s economy by holding the Business Awards every year." - Eoin Brannigan, Belfast Telegraph and Sunday Life Editor in Chief
Meanwhile, Northern Ireland has enjoyed a bumper year of tourism from visitors crossing the border from the Republic, according to new figures.
Research conducted by Tourism NI has found that the vast majority of Republic of Ireland visitors to NI had their expectations matched or exceeded.
“The range of things to see and do, the quality of food and drink, and the warmth of the welcome were rated most highly,” it said.
Margaret Canning has been speaking to Co Down skincare entrepreneur Dr Sam Bunting about growing up in Donaghadee and how her products could soon be available in shops.
Her pared-back range of skincare has been a massive success online and through social media, with almost ￡6m in sales and pre-tax profits of around ￡1m last year.
"We could have been in stores from the first few weeks of the business, but I very quickly became fascinated by the e-commerce space and having customer data and really being able to implement change quickly based on what was working or wasn’t working," she says.
"There becomes a point in time where, if you really want to scale in terms of brand awareness, retail is just the fastest way." - Dr Sam Bunting
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There’s big news in agri-food as Dale Farm announces it will be spending ￡70m on increasing capacity at its cheddar facility in Co Tyrone.
It is one of the biggest ever investments by an agri-food firm in Northern Ireland.
The co-op said the Dunmanbridge site supports over 1,100 families in the area, with 345 employed at the facility and a further 760 farms, out of Dale Farm’s 1,280 milk producers, supplying milk to it.
And as its workload increases thanks to productions like Blue Lights and How To Train Your Dragon, post-production firm Yellowmoon announces a major investment in its Holywood facilities, with the backing of Bank of Ireland.
Yellowmoon started out as a two-man operation with one cutting room, growing to employ 50 people in 35 cutting rooms, with specialists across picture, sound and visual effects.
"The new facility illustrates just how far we have come in the past 30 years. And, more importantly, it demonstrates our confidence in the future of the film and television industry in Northern Ireland." - Greg Darby, Yellowmoon managing director
ICYMI: Our most-read business stories in the last week
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