A FAMILY-RUN construction firm that has become a national success was crowned Business of the Year at the Bolton and Bury Business Awards.

Taziker Industrial Ltd, which was nominated for three awards on the night, is famous for its work on Brunel’s Royal Albert Bridge and has expanded from its Horwich roots to 14 offices across the country.

In the last five years, turnover has increased by 286 per cent, accompanied by a 435 per cent rise in employment, and company bosses were delighted to take home one of the night's most prestigious awards.

Paul Phillips, the firm's engineering director, said: "It's absolutely wonderful to pick up this award.

"Although we work all over the country, we are very proud to be a Bolton-based business.

"We have offices all over the UK, but we use local labour to transfer things to our huge variety of projects.

"We do a lot of very highly-skilled work that is very demanding. We have found that there is a shortage of those kind of skills in this country, and that is what gives us the edge over our competitors."

Taziker is based at Lodge Bank in Horwich and began life in 1969 as T Taziker & Co, founded by the current owner Tom Taziker to carry out decorative and industrial projects.

Taziker Industrial, as it is known today, was founded in 1994 as the company changed both its name and its focus to move away from decorative work to create specialist industrial surface preparation and painting division TI Protective Coatings.

In 2001, Taziker moved from Bolton to a new larger facility where its head office and engineering offices are situated. Its first project for Network Rail, Oykel Viaduct, was completed in 2007 and the company acquired Network Scaffolding as a subsidiary in 2008.

Taziker Industrial Engineering as a steelwork repair division was created in 2009 — and in 2010, the firm acquired a second scaffolding division, Project Scaffolding. In 2011, Taziker was awarded The Royal Albert Bridge and Tay Railway Bridge projects. Works on Tay are still ongoing as the company was awarded the next stage of the refurbishment based on its performance.

The other finalists in the Business of the Year category were Aptus Utilities and Gresham Office Furniture.