Queen's gongs go to healthy innovators

Angel Technology, one of three food manufacturers to win a Queen's Award for Innovation this year, plans to launch a mature version of its Heartily Healthy cholesterol-lowering cheese.

Heartily Healthy contains plant sterols and polyunsaturated fats but looks, tastes and smells like a normal mild cheddar. The stronger version is expected to appeal to the affluent over-50s when it's launched later this year.

According to chief executive Dr Stephen May, the real novelty of the cheese lies in the manufacturing process, carried out in Somerset by a contractor, which combines vegetable oil and water in skimmed milk without damaging the protein content.

The cheese is packaged in Shropshire by Kerrygold and sold around the world by Swiss cheesemaker Emmi as miniCol.

Another Innovation Award winner was Bells of Lazonby, in Cumbria, which has developed a range of high-quality gluten-, wheat- and dairy-free cakes, biscuits, snacks and sponge puddings, which account for a third of its £11M turnover.

Bells had achieved gluten levels below 10ppm, said md Michael Bell, who added that the trickiest part of development had been achieving an acceptable shelf-life.

Greenvale AP, the UK's largest fresh potato company, was also recognised for developing a modified atmosphere storage system, called Restrain.

A Queen's Award for International Trade was given to meat processor Jeffrey Davies and Davies, which has two plants in south east England exporting products for which there is limited demand at home - such as chickens' feet and pigs' cheeks - to customers in the Far East.

Dorset Cereals, Falmouth Fishselling Company, Radnor Hills Mineral Water, and St Peter's Brewery also collected International Trade awards.

St Peter's, which was put on the market for £20M in August last year, has recently been withdrawn from sale.

Britain's oldest brewer, Shepherd Neame, and organic dairy producer Yeo Valley Farms (Production), received Awards for Sustainable Development.