Harvey Water Softeners has been chosen as a winner of The Queens Award for Enterprise in Innovation for 2018.

This year is the 52nd year of the Queens Awards, which are announced on 21 April every year to mark the birthday of HM The Queen.

Founder of Harvey Water Softeners, Harvey Bowden, said: “When my wife Ann bought a water softener, 43 years ago I never expected to end up with an award from HM The Queen. It’s wonderful. Our first goal was just to earn a living, then to make a better water softener and finally to build the best water softener in the world. We have a wonderful family company of people here and it's a pleasure to work with them all.”

Invented by Harvey Bowden, the company says its HV3 water softener is the first designed to fit under a kitchen sink, with two cylinders that allow for continuous softening.

As well as recognising the significance of this invention to the water softening industry, The Queens Award was awarded to Harvey on the back of the company’s recent sales growth.

The Woking-based firm reported sales of £26.5 million in the 12 months to December 2017, a 25% increase on the year before. This was, in part, due to a recent multi-million pound research and development investment programme, which helped to increase factory output by 28%.