Awards finalists a celebration of resilience

FINALISTS for the 2022 Federation University Commerce Ballarat Business Excellence Awards were announced last week at Civic Hall.

Out of 139 applicants, 39 companies were revealed across 13 categories, with representatives receiving their finalist certificates at the event.

The Little Cupcake Ballarat is in the running for two categories, and director Madeleine Witham said it was “a real thrill” to be nominated.

“It’s a very exciting surprise, especially after the last few years,” she said.

“I think today is a great celebration of businesses that have made it through the most difficult few years for them.

“The tremendous amount of work that everyone’s put in in that time is taking its toll so it’s really nice to be here today and just seeing the business community still here and flourishing.”

The winning businesses will be announced at a gala dinner at the Mercure on Thursday, 25 August, where one of the 39 finalists will be crowned Business of the Year.

With the awards’ overarching theme of resilience, Commerce Ballarat chair Hayley Coates said the quality of the finalists highlighted a strong local business climate.

“It was an amazing turnout. We had such a good spread of finalists in such diverse areas,” she said.

“It can be very hard for the judges to have to sort through all the great businesses, so that shows the calibre of finalists really attests to the quality of the applications.

“Despite the hardships of businesses out there, we’ve clearly got a lot that are doing some really great, exciting things and we need to celebrate that.”

Ms Coates added the application process in itself was like “a business health check on steroids,” regardless of whether the organisation became a finalist.

“To go through this process, it makes you look through all the different aspects of your business and compare your benchmarking against different businesses,” she said.

“Even if you’re not a finalist, the process of doing that, answering all the questions and looking at aspects you might have not otherwise, is such a great opportunity.”