Winterthur staff splashed out to raise money for local charities at the Lions Club of Basingstoke’s 25th annual swimarathon.

The swimarathon took place on Saturday March 8 2008 at Tadley swimming pool. With a total of eight teams taking part from four local companies, the annual swimarathon is one of many charity events run by fundraising organisation The Lions Club of Basingstoke that assists needy people throughout the world. People of all ages and swimming abilities participate, raising as much money as they can.

Three teams represented Winterthur at the swimarathon:

• Soden’s Swimarathon Sharks - Laura Soden, Oliver Harrup, Jeremy Moulton, Derek Somerville, Rachel Welford
• Deadman’s Humpback Whales - Dave Deadman, Linda Owen, Lisa Cornwell, Andrew Baird, Richard Satchwell
• Winterthur’s Electric Eels - Toorban Mandal, Peter Stagg , Diane Stagg, Richard Goswell, Chris Pearce.

Between them, the teams swam a total of 102 lengths, and raised £1335.50 in pledges, which Winterthur have agreed to match, bringing the total raised to £2671, with half the money going towards The Lions Club’s chosen charities, including schools and other worthwhile causes in and around the Basingstoke area.

Barry Morgan, Lions Club president said:

Everyone who participated had a great time, they really went for it and the distance swam was very impressive. We’re very grateful for all the effort put in and the money raised.

The remaining half will be donated to Winterthur’s chosen charity Naomi House, a local children’s hospice outside Winchester. Jill Livingstone, corporate fundraiser for Naomi House, said:

The ongoing support we receive from Winterthur is fantastic. Naomi House relies on the generosity of people in the community to continue its work. This money raised will make a real difference, helping us to provide crucial care services, free of charge, to children and their families at a time when they need it most.

Laura Soden, project coordinator at Winterthur, who organised the teams, said:

I would like to say thank you to all those who participated in the swimarathon this year, we managed to raise an amazing amount of money. This is the second year I have participated in the swim, and it’s a great event, with a fantastic atmosphere on the night.

Buhrs UK has moved its head office operations to a new 465sqm facility in Basingstoke.

The mailing equipment manufacturer has relocated to an Ashwood Park office, which also houses accommodates the manufacturer’s sales and administration operations 13 of Buhrs UK’s 16 employees.

Buhrs UK managing director John Ricketts said the expansion was “a significant milestone for us and tangible proof of our success over the past year”.

He added:

We had seriously outgrown our old office in central Basingstoke and are delighted that we’ve not had to go too far to find such excellent premises.

Ref. Printweek

ITT Interconnect Solutions has created a centre for military and aerospace customers at its Basingstoke facility in the UK.

The company has increased its engineering and sales capabilities dedicated to this important European sector to service the increasing complexity of customisation required by the latest defence and aeronautical programs.

Currently, ITT Interconnect Solutions is working to deliver parts for the VIS military communications program and also the MRAP (Mine Resistant Armoured Protection) vehicle.

Its Basingstoke Military & Aerospace Centre of Excellence also includes a cable assembly facility approved to ISO9001.

Source Evertiq

RingGo, the UK’s leading pay-by-phone parking brand from Basingstoke based Cobalt Telephone Techionlogies, has won the 2008 British Parking Award for marketing in recognition of its success in building the brand over the past two years since launch.

The British Parking Awards is the foremost event in the UK parking calendar and highlights areas of individual and corporate excellence within the UK’s £3bn per annum parking services industry. Now in their seventh year, the awards attract fierce competition from all parts of the industry. Last year, RingGo was short-listed, and received a commendation for its entry in the Innovation Award category.

In making the award, the judges particularly applauded the rigour with which the company identified and reflected the interests of potential and actual customers through their marketing. The detail and thought behind the campaigns also proved to be a key factor in RingGo being chosen as the ultimate winner by the panel of senior industry experts.

These awards are fiercely contested and I am absolutely delighted that RingGo has received national recognition by the industry at what is still such an early stage in the development of our service,

said RingGo’s Commercial Director, Harry Clarke.

Since its launch two years ago, we have worked tirelessly to develop the RingGo brand, largely through providing both local authorities and people on the street with a service and identity to which they can easily relate. I would like to thank our existing local authority customers, who have been amongst our greatest advocates.

Basingstoke’s newest bank is celebrating after it was voted one of the top ten companies to work for in the UK.

Handelsbanken, which employs 4 staff locally, was ranked 10th in the 2008 Sunday Times 100 Best Companies to Work For awards – the largest league table of UK workplaces, as viewed by company staff.

As well as improving its position from 11th in 2007, Handelsbanken was one of only two banking organisations to be awarded a top three-star accreditation from Best Companies Ltd for extraordinary performance.

Magnus Uggla, Head of Regional Bank Southern England, said:

It is a tremendous achievement to be ranked in the top ten best companies, given the increased competition and the fact that we have grown so rapidly during the last year.

I think one of the most appealing aspects of working for Handelsbanken is the empowerment and trust we place in our people. The bank is like a federation of independent business units which share the same business model; this means staff are given a lot of freedom in deciding how business should be conducted, which is quite unique,” he said.

An award like this strengthens our brand and makes it easier for us to attract highly qualified members of staff, enabling us to enhance our growth in the future.

The Basingstoke branch at Matrix House, Basing View opened in January 2008.

Craig Ward, branch manager of Handelsbanken Basingstoke, said:

The growth of our business has exceeded expectations. It is testament to Handelsbanken’s outstanding reputation that we are able to recruit the best managers available in the marketplace to support this expansion.

The survey revealed that 83 per cent of Handelsbanken’s employees love working for the bank, which was ranked as the second best company overall in terms of staff well being.

Handelsbanken first came to the UK more than 25 years ago to cater for Nordic businesses and their British subsidiaries, but quickly realised the potential to provide universal banking services locally; the branch network that has followed is one of the most successful banking operations set up outside of the high street banks.

Now in its 8th year, the Sunday Times Best Companies to Work For awards is a comprehensive guide to the 100 best workplaces in the UK, as voted for by company staff.

Local MP Maria Miller has met with CORGI’s Chief Executive, Mike Thompson, to discuss how the Basingstoke-based company is continuing to push the gas safety message in the UK.

CORGI is the UK’s gas safety watchdog and, by law, anyone that works on gas is required to be registered with CORGI.

Speaking following the meeting, CORGI’s Chief Executive Mike Thompson explained:

The visit to our Basingstoke headquarters gave us an important opportunity to discuss the work of CORGI and to exchange ideas on how we promote the gas safety message. Maria has an ongoing interest in the topic so we are very much pushing the same direction.

Maria Miller, Co-Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Gas Safety Group which brings together interested parties from across the political spectrum, said:

I was delighted to visit CORGI again to meet the people who are working so hard to improve further the safety of gas appliances that we rely on in our everyday life. The people at CORGI are an important local Basingstoke business and have a vital role in national gas safety. I know through the work that I do in Parliament the tremendous contribution that CORGI makes. I would particularly like to applaud the work they have done in raising awareness of carbon monoxide poisoning and what we can all do to stop so many needless deaths.

The Women in Business Group warmly welcomed local Consultant Surgeon and Divisional Director, Anne Stebbing, from the Basingstoke and North Hampshire NHS Foundation Trust, at an event held at The Ark Conference Centre in Basingstoke. Anne provided an update on ‘where we are now’ with breast cancer, the most common type of cancer in women living in England and Wales.

Facts: One in nine women will have breast cancer at some time in their life.  Breast cancer accounts for nearly one-third of all cancers in women.  There are 41,000 new cases of breast cancer each year.  Over 300 men are diagnosed each year in the UK.

A sobering thought.  However, Anne stated, that even though it is the most common of cancers, less women today are dying of it.  Because of the breast screening programmes brought in by the NHS 20 years ago, there has been an earlier diagnosis of the disease.

Sue Brown, President of the Women In Business Group, thanked Anne for her insightful talk, saying, “This has given us such a comprehensive and clear understanding of breast cancer, and what we can do to help ourselves.”

Anne supports The ARK Centre, a solely funded charitable building owned by the North Hampshire Medical Education Trust.  The Women In Business Group has donated £250 to the Trust.

Anne will be speaking again at ‘The Ark Ambassadors Lunch’ – a ladies lunch being held on the 23rd April.  For further details call 01256 360400 or email enquiries@arkcentre.com

Bryan McCrae, owner of Cognitive Sales, based in Hook, is celebrating the companies fifth birthday, having now worked with over forty companies in Hampshire, Berkshire and surrounding areas to help them improve their sales results.

After originally training a a psychologist, then working in IT for several years, Bryan combined over twenty years of award winning sales and marketing experience to create Cognitive Sales in 2003 with the objective of helping companies improve and grow their sales and marketing.

Unlike traditional training or coaching companies, Cognitive builds long term relationships with it’s clients to really understand what they are trying to achieve, builds an action plan to help them get there, then gets directly involved to help them achieve the goals and likes to be paid by results. Bryan commented

The fact that we are happy to put our money where or mouth is really appreciated by our clients, as it shows them how confident we are that we can help them achieve the results that they want. We’ve helped one client grow from £400k pa turnover to over £2.4m pa turnover on exactly this basis.

The list of clients that Cognitive Sales has helped vary from video production companies such as Web-Epics near Petersfield, that produce high quality cost-effective video marketing materials; to high tech IT companies such as Mwr InfoSecurity in Basingstoke who deliver a comprehensive range of IT security testing services.

As well as working directly with it’s clients, Cognitive Sales also supports Portsmouth University Enterprise Centre and often presents on sales and marketing topics for various organisations including Business Link, The British Psychological Society, the FSB and local Ecademy network meetings.

In the words of one happy client, Martin Shepherdley at Web-Epics: ”Bryan is a rare breed; a sales and marketing Titan !”

www.cogsales.com

By adding features to the website, such as the Basingstoke Business directory, we have seen a marked increase in traffic over the past month, with February 2008 reaching our best traffic ever - meaning more people are seeing the news in Basingstoke.

Bearing in mind this is a very specific geographical website, the search engines referrals are coming in thick and fast. This is also partly to the breadth of stories we are being sent. That said, the more we get, the better the traffic.

Traffic for February reached is highest with 825 unique visitors looking at 1805 pages of information.

Most of which is being driven from search engines - people could be finding you through this website.

About these figures

These figures are taken from in-page tracking, rather than taken from Hits or Log Stats. This means the visitors are real people. They do not include any regular contributors - we discard those visits.

Please keep the news coming - this is the main part of the website and will continue to drive traffic. If you are a Basingstoke business, based in Hook, Tadley, out to Whitchurch, etc. please e-mail us your press releases and help build even more value, which we can all share as the Basingstoke Business Community.

Thanks, Craig