Bowers and Wilkins gains Queen’s Award

The Worthing-based firm gained the accolade as a result of its ground-breaking work developing the synthetic Diamond Dome Tweeter – a speaker unit whose critical diaphragm component comprises synthetic diamond.

Susan Pyper, Her Majesty’s Lord Lieutenant, presented the honour to Bowers & Wilkins chief operating officer, Geoff Edwards.

Welcoming the award, which related to its 800 Series Diamond model which is used in leading studios including Abbey Road, he said: “It is an absolute honour to be accepting this award for innovation.

“At Bowers & Wilkins, we have always strived to excel in the reproduction of sound across all of our product range.

“Working with Element Six and utilising synthetic diamond in our tweeters gives our products another stand-out ingredient that really is unique to the market.”

Both the tweeter units and the complete 800 Series Diamond systems are manufactured in the UK at the Bowers & Wilkins factory in Worthing.

The company is the first manufacturer to perfect the use of synthetic diamond domes in loudspeakers and, while the idea for using the material was proposed by its acoustic engineers some years ago, it took some time for the technology to catch up with the theory.

The brand has a long history of pioneering new acoustic technologies, an approach that saw it win a Queen’s Award for Enterprise in 2005 for its Nautilus tube-loaded tweeters and earlier become the first speaker company to utilise the unique acoustic properties of Kevlar® in its loudspeakers.

MP Tim Loughton said: “B&W is one of Worthing’s major employers with a brand name that is synonymous with quality worldwide.

“It is great news for Worthing that the company has won the award for the quality of its technological innovation in loudspeakers and a tribute to the company that they have concentrated their production in the town rather than overseas. This is an award to the whole workforce who can be rightly proud.”