Dryad Maritime wins Queen’s Award for Enterprise
Huge congratulations to our client Dryad Maritime, based in Portsmouth, which has been awarded a coveted Queen’s Award for Enterprise in the Innovation category. The award is the highest business accolade a UK company can receive and is recognised globally.
The company received the award, appropriately announced on the Queen’s 90th birthday, in recognition of its outstanding work in developing intelligence-led systems that improve the safety of seafarers around the world.
Our CEO and Dryad’s Chairman, Nik Askaroff, has worked with the company for three years and was among the first to congratulate it on its achievement. He said: “Dryad Maritime is a tremendous success story. Starting just seven years ago with three employees and a business loan of £25,000, it has since grown exponentially with the opening of new offices and the recruitment of 33 new employees. Over the past five years turnover has soared almost 12-fold.”
The company has been recognised internationally for the valuable work it does in protecting ships and their crew from the ever-growing threat posed to them by maritime criminals. In 2013, for example, it secured the highly competitive IHS Safety at Sea Award.
Graeme Gibbon-Brooks, Dryad Maritime’s Chief Executive, said: “Our approach has been a careful balance of prudent management and ardent entrepreneurial spirit. Of all of our successes over the years, winning the Queen’s Award for Enterprise is by far the most significant and important recognition the company has achieved and a great source of personal pride.
“Of course, this has been a team effort but personally, I have particularly appreciated the wise counsel and business mentoring that Nik has provided. In the early phases of his tenure, Nik helped me shape the team and ethos and create the right focus in the business. A great sounding board in times of challenge, a loyal supporter and a voice of experience, I am extremely grateful to Nik for his part in this success.”
Dryad Maritime’s innovations include a bespoke geo-spatial tracking system named ‘Moneypenny’, which monitors the positions of client vessels, pirates and friendly forces as well as risk exclusion zones, and the award-winning Fleet Security Management Service which optimises the performance of vessels through its provision of route guidance based on fuel efficiency, risk, SOLAS convention and weather patterns.