A Cotswold soap maker, a Warwickshire-based 3D printing pioneer that supplies car manufacturers and an Edinburgh tech-reurbishment social enterprise are among 186 organizations honored this year with The King’s Awards for Enterprise, as Britain’s most prestigious business honor marks its 60th anniversary.
The 2026 group, which includes 76 winners in international trade, 52 in innovation, 36 in sustainability and 22 in improving opportunities through social movements, underlines the growing scope of the awards first presented by Queen Elizabeth II in 1966. Renamed in 2022 after the King’s accession, the honor has honored British businesses for more than 800 years.
A story of sustainability written in soap
For Emma Heathcote-James, founder of The Little Soap Company, the recognition validates a principled approach to value over margin since she started hand-making bars from her Cotswold cottage in 2008.
“We’re not making the profits we might if we did everything in China, but every decision we make we put the planet and people first,” said Heathcote-James, 49, whose products are now stocked by Waitrose, Tesco and Boots.
The business, which turns over £2.4 million and employs 13 staff, produces exclusively in Scotland and the north of England, home to Britain’s few remaining soap factories, and produces certified vegan, cruelty-free ranges in recycled packaging.
However, it was not prevented from macroeconomic depression. Chief executive Sharon Redrobe, who is married to Heathcote-James, said political tensions had pushed up the cost of raw materials, including essential oils used in perfumes, while some competitors were struggling. Winning as a small, independent business, he said, is the company’s “biggest battle” so far.
The Little Soap Company deliberately avoided outside investment, wary of pressure to increase margins by switching to cheaper products. “It’s really important that we show that you can have a successful business and do things right from the start,” Heathcote-James said.
From mom’s garage to the supercar grid
In Shipston-on-Stour, Warwickshire, RYSE 3D received an international trade award after export orders increased by around 2,300 per cent to £2.24 million in three years. The company produces high-performance 3D printed parts for more than 20 of the world’s leading marques.
Founder Mitchell Barnes, 29, started 3D printing in his mother’s garage as an undergraduate, using his student loan money to build the first prototype and selling the service to his classmates after successfully printing a model for his car design degree. He is among the youngest ever medalists, and has now collected his second King’s Medal in as many years, having won his first at the age of 27.
“It’s a royal honor,” Barnes said. “You can’t believe it when you first get it, but to win twice is even crazier.”
The business, which employs 25 people, exports mainly to Latvia, Denmark and the United States, although the tax regime introduced by Washington last year has eaten away at US profits. Healthy margins allowed RYSE 3D to absorb some of the impact, but Barnes said the group had to redouble efforts elsewhere to compensate, including introducing an automated online ordering tool aimed at everyday customers.
To deal with a chronic skills shortage, the company has taken to hiring outside the industry entirely, training former coffee baristas as 3D printing engineers. Barnes plans to open offices on the east and west coasts of the United States before the end of 2026.
Refurbishing devices, repairing communities
The Edinburgh Remakery, a ten-strong social enterprise recognized in the sustainability category, refurbishes and sells used technology, donates devices to people facing digitalisation and delivers non-repairable parts to professional processors including the Royal Mint, which extracts gold from old boards.
Chief executive Elaine Brown said the team were thrilled when the news arrived: “There was a lot of jumping up and down in the vending machine that day and some of the cakes had just been celebrated.”
Demand for the service has grown as businesses retire PCs before the end of support for Windows 10, but Brown asserted that many of these machines can be given a second life by installing other applications. “Being a profitable business is good for business,” he said. “We have increased our money, we have increased our marriage, and the King’s Award is the best.”
Winners around the world described the application process as perfect. Serial entrepreneur Will Fletcher, 46, who presided over the advertising industry as a judge, said the test was deliberately rigorous.
“It’s a really rigorous process,” he said. “You always get a few that come in and out, and then there are a few really tough cases.”
The sector, Fletcher noted, rewards profitable companies that give back to their communities, a task that “takes time to do right and is not directly linked to how much profit the company makes”. His former business, Recycling Lives, has won the award four times, including in 2019 for supporting ex-offenders to be employed, where recycling rates among participants run below 5 percent compared to the national average of nearly two-thirds. Fletcher now runs Car.co.uk, a Lancashire-based digital car-buying platform, which itself picked up a 2026 innovation award.
Taken together, this year’s call suggests that British SMEs continue to gain a competitive advantage not in spite of their heritage, but because of it, a message that the King’s Awards have championed, in one way or another, for six decades.
