£20,000 prize as Bioflame beats off hot competition (From Gazette & Herald)

£20,000 prize as Bioflame beats off hot competition

A Pickering-based company has won £20,000-worth of prizes in a business plan competition.

Bioflame Ltd, successful environmental engineering company, won the accolade at Venturefest, a business networking event held at York Racecourse earlier this month.

The prize package includes £3,000 cash donated by the Shepherd Group of Sheffield, as well as free legal, accounting and marketing advice. The company will also have the use of an office at York's Science City.

"It raises our profile and, frankly, the PR alone is a major boost," said managing director Victor Buchanan.

Bioflame is an environmental technology company that specialises in finding new ways to tackle old problems in waste management. Its range of compliant equipment, including eco-friendly waste burners and gasifiers, turns waste into energy. Its technology is now in use both in the UK and internationally, with over 60,000 cubic metres of wood saved from destruction annually in central America, where a number of green coffee drying mills rely solely on burning their waste for fuel.

Bioflame intend to become market leader in the small-scale waste/biomass to energy market and to become a major producer of high-value renewable energy, and Mr Buchanan believes the award will go a long way in achieving that aim.

"It lends us a lot of credibility, and will hopefully prompt people to sit up and take notice of what we are achieving," he said. "We've beaten ten other companies, all good companies, which is quite an achievement."

Updated: 12:59 Wednesday, February 16, 2005