Elgin-based Gaia Earth Group (GEG) was presented with two prestigious King’s Awards for Enterprise today.
Two subsidiaries of the company, Gaia Earth Sciences (GES) and Gaia Earth Technologies (GET), each won an award in the long-running scheme’s innovation category last year.
But the paperwork was not in place to change the honours to King’s Awards, rather than Queen’s Awards, following the previous monarch’s death in September 2022.
An official presentation could not, therefore, take place before now.
Former Army commander presents Gaia Earth Group with its two gongs
GEG finally received its two accolades from the Lord Lieutenant of Moray, former Amy Commander Major General Seymour Monro.
They were given in recognition of the respective roles of both subsidiaries in the development and commercialisation of the group’s innovative cable protection systems.
The technology is designed to stop wireline logging cables used in the oil and gas industry becoming trapped and stuck down the well during offshore logging operations.
This issue can potentially escalate to multi-million-pound losses for offshore operators.
It is now 17 years since GEG launched its research and development (R&D) programme to tackle the problem.
In 2011 field testing of the group’s nascent cable protection technology started in the Gulf of Mexico, with great success.
The system was then further developed through five years of continuous R&D.
GET was launched in 2017 to focus on the roll-out of cable protection and build other technologies that offer safer, quicker and cleaner wireline logging operations for clients.
The Moray-based group is celebrating 21 years in business
The wider group was founded in 2003 by director Stuart Huyton.
He was educated at Elgin Academy, Gordonstoun and Heriot Watt University before embarking on a career in the oil and gas industry.
GEG has to date generated 36 patents and achieved many world firsts.
Seven of the top 10 oil and gas clients worldwide now use its cable protection systems.
And the company boasts more than 30 consultants around the world, based in oil and gas industry hotspots from Thailand to Europe, the US Gulf Coast and Latin America.
GES previously won a Queen’s Award for Enterprise, in the international trade category, in 2012.
Celebrating the group’s latest honours, Mr Huyton said: “We are proud that all of our equipment is manufactured in the UK as we want to support our industries here.”
Now in their 58th year, the royal gongs are regarded by many as the most prestigious business accolades in the UK.
They are awarded for outstanding achievement in innovation, international trade, sustainable development and promoting opportunity through social mobility.
Last year’s were the first in the name of the King following the death of the late Queen.
Winners are allowed to use the coveted awards emblem for the next five years.
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