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The Aspire Awards: all the winners and why we chose them

From ridding Sierra Leone of Ebola, to snaring 60 per cent of the Singaporean pork market, our finalists in the Aspire Awards, presented by BRW and PwC Private Clients, have achieved amazing things away from the ASX spotlight. Here are all the winners in our awards and why our judges chose them.

Michael Bailey
Updated

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When the Australian government sought a medical team to send to Sierra Leone to help tackle the Ebola outbreak, it turned to Canberra-based Aspen Medical, which deployed a team of 73 medical specialists from its 2500-strong workforce.

Aspen Medical managed Australia's Ebola Treatment Centre, admitted 216 patients, trained locals to safely provide care to patients and concluded its engagement without any of its health professionals contracting the disease. This week, the World Health Organisation declared Sierra Leone had arrested the transmission of the devastating virus that killed 3589 people since the first outbreak was recorded in May 2014.

Founded in 2003 to provide global diversified healthcare services, Aspen Medical is now a beacon for what private and family-owned businesses can achieve, and was recognised at the BRW and PwC Private Clients Aspire Awards held in Sydney on Tuesday winning the award for Private Business Growth and Transformation for organisations with revenues of more than $100 million.

Aspirational: all the winners of an Aspire Award, presented by BRW and PwC. 

The Aspire Awards showcase the innovation and transformative entrepreneurialism of Australia's legions of private and family businesses.

David Wills, managing partner for PwC Private Clients, said these businesses shaped Australia's economy and society. He said two-thirds of all Australian businesses were privately owned, delivered two-thirds of Australia's growth and employed two-thirds of all workers. Private and family companies are also an "important part of the innovation culture in Australia," he said.

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Selling stories is what drives Booktopia, which won the second Private Growth and Transformation category of the awards, for organisations with annual revenue between $10 million and $100 million.

CEO Tony Nash said the company had begun operations 12 years ago with a "$10-a-day budget", and took three days to sell its first book. Today it sells a book every eight seconds, has 110,000 titles in stock and recently bought Angus & Robertson to add momentum to its continuing expansion.

Nash – who runs the business with his brother-in-law, sister and brother – says family-owned businesses are able to develop an ethos and culture that might be harder to replicate in other business structures.

However, the challenges that face family businesses, especially managing succession issues, are acknowledged by David Smorgon, executive chairman of PwC Private Clients' Family, Business and Wealth group. Smorgon says that although family dynamics do not register on corporate balance sheets, they are essential to the ongoing health of a family-owned business, and that family meetings are equally important to board meetings to ensure sustained success.

"I deal with 80-year-old founders, or owners who don't want to let go, yet their adult children – bright, successful people in their 40s and 50s – are crying out to be given a chance, to try their own ideas," he says.

"It's a conversation that needs to be had, yet families tend to spend all their time on the business and not enough time on this family aspect."

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The winner of the Aspire Successful Family Business Award was Slattery Auctions and Valuations, and PayMe Australia was highly commended. In Slattery's case, the award recognised a successful transition from father to sons; in PayMe's case, it was the careful building of structures and processes that give it the best chance possible of surviving intact into a third generation.

Other Aspire Award winners were the Craig Mostyn Group, which won the Asian Success category; LEDified Lighting, which was awarded as the Aspire Start-up Disrupter; and BG&E for Societal Impact, with Mark Moran Group highly commended in the category.

For details of the judging panel and their comments about the Aspire Award winners, visit brw.com.au.

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