Beech Group's Kemp is Maritime Industry Rising Star
Lauren Kemp, second left, collects her Rising Star award from Prof Ahmed Al-Shamma’a of Liverpool John Moores University, left, the award sponsor. Pictured here with joint Rising Star winner John-James Gallagher of Royal HaskoningDHV and event host BBC Breakfast presenter Louise Minchin. (Photo: Mersey Maritime)
Demolition and remediation experts Beech Group has announced Group Financial Controller Lauren Kemp as a winner of this year’s Rising Star Award in the region’s most prestigious maritime industry awards.
Chris Wainwright, Managing Director at Beech Group. who entered Lauren for the Mersey Maritime Industry Awards (MMIAs), said he was delighted that the work and achievements of one of his younger members of staff had been publicly acknowledged.
He said: “Lauren’s win is testament to her tremendous hard work and dedication. At only 28, she has helped steer this company from a small business with only 18 staff to our current level of 50, managed a growing order book, improved our accounting systems, acquired her AAT qualifications along the way and, most importantly, kept us running profitably during a period of investment and rapid growth.”
Rising Star winner Lauren said: “Winning this award is a huge and unexpected accolade and I’m hugely grateful to Chris for nominating me. I work with a fantastic team of people at Beech Group and I hope the pride I take in my work shone through at interview.”
The Mersey Maritime Industry Awards are held annually in March to celebrate the breadth and diversity of the Maritime Sector - including key sub-sectors such as Logistics and Energy - in the UK’s North West.
Hosted by BBC Breakfast’s Louise Minchin, they bring together industry leaders and local businesses of all sizes from across the region and wider UK, recognising achievement across a range of categories. The awards include Business of the Year, Best Newcomer, SME of the Year, Innovation, Engineering, Rising Star, Global Reach, Engineering and Maritime Professional Services, Micro Business of the Year and Positive Impact.
Chris Shirling-Rooke, Chief Executive of Mersey Maritime, who started the awards in 2015, said: “The Rising Star award is one of the most popular awards of the night because it highlights the wealth of young talent that is coming into our industry and powering it towards further growth.”
He added: “We want to reconnect young people on Merseyside with the breadth and diversity of options a career in the maritime industry can provide, whether working at sea or on land.
“Lauren and others like her are role models for the future of the UK’s maritime sector; they are emphatically modernising the way we do things and in a post-Brexit Britain stand poised to ensure maritime is also recognised by the wider public as one of the key drivers of the UK economy.”
