East Gresford food manufacturers TAR 10 were named the best of the best at the Dungog District Chamber of Commerce business awards on Saturday night.
Sponsored by the Dungog Chronicle, the award was received by Melanie Collingwood-Boots.
The driving force of the business, Ms Collingwood-Boots has a strong background in food and catering and has established a successful range of chutneys, relishes and sauces that are gluten and preservative free and made from fresh produce sourced from local growers and suppliers.
Originally just for family and friends, her products are now exported interstate and, in the near future, to the USA.
The judges said the business had good marketing through website and brochures and were always looking to experiment and develop new products to meet the market.
Click on the image for more photos from the big night. Article continues below.
“They have consistent and clear business aims and principles and are regular winners of competitive product awards such as the Sydney Royal Show and Mudgee Fine Food Awards,” they said.
“They have excellent customer service and are very popular and highly thought of by their clients and their distributors.”
Chamber president John Rose said the business awards was the chamber’s major event for the year.
“It’s the main in which we acknowledge, celebrate and promote the achievements of business in the Dungog Shire,” Mr Rose said.
“Our shire is not dominated by large scale industry – mining, manufacturing and so on. We don’t live on boom and bust.
“We don’t have large centres of population. We are a small, diverse, friendly community in an idyllic country location.
“Our business community reflects that.
“For the most part our businesses are small, often family-owned and in most cases, owner-operated.
“It would be fair to say in that context that we are not overburdened with excesss capital, time aplenty, or masses of staff to do our bidding.
“Yet these awards show we can boast of a dynamic community of businesses striving to achieve excellence and to provide goods and services of value to their customers and local community.”
John Evers from Camyr Allyn Wines received the Chamber Member’s Award for this tireless work for the organisation.
Mr Rose said John managed to find all kinds of ways to support the chamber while continuing to run, with his wife Judy, a very demanding and successful viticultural and marketing business.
“From generous commitment of his own time to even more generous donations of his excellent wines and hosting of the end-of-year social gathering, John has defined the model of an engaged, selfless and committed member of the business community generally and the chamber in particular.”
For all the photos from the night visit photo galleries to the right of the home page.
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