Filtronic wins 2021 Queen’s Award for Enterprise for International Trade

Posted on 29 April, 2021 by Advance 

Designer and manufacturer of RF, microwave and mmWave products for the telecoms, critical communications and defence applications markets, Filtronic plc, today announced that it has been honoured with a Queen’s Award for Enterprise for International Trade.

Image courtesy Queen’s Award for Enterprise for International Trade 2021


Filtronic is one of 205 organisations nationally to be recognised this year with a prestigious Queen’s Award for Enterprise, of which 122 are for International Trade. Filtronic’s successful award entry focused on the outstanding short-term growth in export sales of its microwave and mmWave solutions over a three-year period.

Filtronic was founded in 1977, and specialises in RF, microwave and mmWave subsystems. Its E-band transceivers are used in 5G backhaul, and also find applications in test & measurement, and in High Altitude Platform Stations (HAPS) and Low Earth Orbit (LEO satellites). New markets continue to be nurtured, for example E-band transceivers have recently been supplied for a successful trial of a 10Gbps track-to-train backhaul solution in Asia.

“Filtronic’s award celebrates the global nature of our business. It specifically acknowledges the export success of our E-band mmWave transceiver products, of which we have shipped over 50,000 units to date with 99.9% destined for customers outside the UK,” said Walter Magiera, Chief Commercial Officer of Filtronic. “We are very proud to have been honoured with this award, and consider it an exceptional achievement for a company with a 40-year heritage to be growing exports at such a rate.”

“We continue to invest in both capability and research & development, to help us increase our share in the rapidly growing telecom market,” said Richard Gibbs, CEO of Filtronic. “Over the past 18 months we have invested over £1 million in new equipment, and have expanded our workforce, in our hybrid microelectronics assembly facility in Sedgefield, County Durham. This has enabled us to significantly increase capacity, keep production going throughout the Covid-19 pandemic and maintain a strong order book during the 2021 fiscal year.”

Now in its 55th year, the Queen’s Awards for Enterprise are the most prestigious business awards in the UK, and are designed to acknowledge and encourage outstanding achievements in the fields of innovation, international trade, sustainable development and promoting opportunity through social mobility.

Applications for Queen’s Awards for Enterprise 2022 open on 1 May 2021. For more information, visit www.gov.uk/queens-awards-for-enterprise
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