RF Engines Ltd presented with Queen’s Award for Innovation 2009

The ceremony took place on Friday 14th August at the Royal Yacht Squadron in Cowes and was attended by Andrew Turner, MP for the Isle of Wight, RFEL’s staff and their partners, as well as many of its customers, investors and suppliers.

At the presentation ceremony, John Summers, RFEL’s CEO, was presented with a crystal bowl engraved with The Queen’s Awards Emblem as a symbol of its success as well as a Grant of Appointment. The company is now also entitled to use the Emblem internationally in all of its corporate branding and literature.

John Summers, RFEL’s CEO, said, “The presentation ceremony gives a perfect opportunity to thank everyone who has been involved in helping make RF Engines a tremendously successful company. The Isle of Wight is a perfect location to operate from with supportive government bodies, excellent links that enable us to run a global company with business from multinational companies and defence organisations around the world – and of course it’s an idyllic location that enables us to attract some of the best, most talented engineers in the business.”

The Queen’s Award for Enterprise is the UK’s most prestigious Award for business performance and recognises and rewards outstanding achievement by UK companies. The Innovation category is for continuous innovation and development, sustained over not less than five years to levels that are outstanding for the size of a company’s operations.

RFEL is a privately held company based on the Isle of Wight that was formed in 2000 and now employs over 20 highly qualified designers. It has been profitable for several years and has been steadily growing year on year both in revenue terms and head count. RFEL's customers are mainly 'Tier 1' companies in each of its main markets, including Thales, Qinetiq, UK Ministry of Defence, Rheinmetall (Germany), CEA (France), Agilent (Switzerland) and LIG Nex1 (Korea), as well as many other major international clients.

The company develops (and patents as appropriate) products based on high performance, state-of-the-art, digital signal processing techniques that enable fast moving events or fleeting, hopping signals occurring in the radio spectrum to be identified and analysed. These designs are incorporated into an increasing number of RFEL’s own products as well as their customers’ products.

RFEL’s solutions have a variety of applications such as in the design of efficient wireless communication (satellite and terrestrial) networks, test and measurement instrumentation, homeland security surveillance systems, bespoke wideband receivers/transceivers and in systems to detect signals from fast moving missiles or other military threats.

Previous awards
2008 – South East England Development Agency (SEEDA) Business Award for Innovation & Creativity
2006 – ‘Embedded System Innovation of the Year’ category in the ‘Elektra’ European Electronic Awards
2005 – Winner of the prestigious GSPx New Product Forum Award for the third year in a row

2003 – ‘Start up of the Year’ at the Elektra European Industry Awards