Leading Hunter-based organisation Hedweld were recently announced as the national winner of the Minerals and Energy Award, as part of the Premier’s Export Awards.

The Hedweld Group of Companies are world leaders in the design and manufacturing of Trilift maintenance support equipment and Safe-Away ladder and stairway access systems for large mining and earthmoving vehicles.

At the presentation ceremony, on Wednesday 16 October 2013, Ian Murray, Executive Chairman of the Export Council of Australia said that the awards present the state's best of the best exporters, in front of an audience of over six hundred.

“This year's awards showcased some truly innovative companies, particularly in all export sectors and we congratulate the Hedweld Group of Companies on their success,” Ian said.

Over the last 50 years over 324 NSW companies have been recognised for their exporting achievements within the Premier’s NSW Export Awards program, many of whom started off in Emerging Exporter and Small Business award categories and are now major international brands.

The Awards are an annual program, which aims to recognise excellence in the export of goods and services by NSW business, acknowledges the important contribution of businesses to the economy through job creation and increased prosperity for the community and for the state.

Hedweld Managing Director, Ian Hedley, said that they are proud to be solution providers in the mining industry, especially considering the industry is currently facing hard times

“Australian companies are considered the best in the world at innovation and have a very good reputation of being problem solvers for the mining industry,” Ian said.

“We're very proud of our achievements, having managed to expand our export markets from 23 countries to 29 in the past 12 months.”

Hedweld Group of Companies consists of Hedweld Engineering Pty Ltd, Hedweld USA Inc., Safe-Away Pty Ltd, Mecensol and Justoy Pty Ltd.