In the latest of our series talking to the 2020 winners of the Queen’s Awards, we’re asking an IT firm awardee about the impact winning has had on its business and how it is coping with the disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Revealed on 21 April, 128 companies were awarded in the international trade category this year, showing the importance of exporting to the UK economy.

Profile: Techbuyer, provider of IT hardware to the NHS

Organisations across the world and all sectors may be doing more on the cloud nowadays, but IT hardware remains an ‘essential industry’.

It has been classed as such by government during the lockdown, and Harrogate-based Queen’s Award winner Techbuyer have been in the “fortunate” position to continue to serve their clients – including in the NHS.

“We feel very fortunate to be able to remain open and continue supplying our NHS, public and private sector clients during these difficult times,” the firm’s managing director Mick Payne told us.

Birthday delay

Techbuyer is a global specialist in the buying, refurbishment and selling of enterprise IT hardware - predominantly servers, storage and networking for data centres.

Like many companies, it has had to adapt to continue operating during the lockdown.

“We had to transition early on to split shifts, remote working and ensure social distancing,” says Payne.

The firm’s 15th birthday celebrations had to postponed due to the lockdown measures, though the firm promises it will “catch up on that later”.

Gone global

In a decade and a half, Techbuyer has grown from local start-up to global enterprise employing over 170 people with two facilities in the US, and one in Australia, New Zealand, France and Germany.

This international growth resulted in the firm winning a prestigious Queen’s Award this year, which has provided a “ray of sunshine at a very difficult time.”

And beyond the horizon on the other side of the pandemic Techbuyer hopes to use the award to attract new customers in new markets, with Payne saying the honour is as “a great mark of quality for the goods and services we supply”.