Business awards go to Salzkotten

The Condor Group is awarded the "Großer Preis des Mittelstandes" prize. The city of Salzkotten receives the special prize as "Best Municipality 2023".

There was double reason to celebrate on Saturday in Düsseldorf at the "Großer Preis des Mittelstandes" for Salzkotten. Both the Condor Group and the city of Salzkotten were honored by the Oskar Patzelt Foundation 2023. A total of 4,075 companies as well as banks and municipalities were nominated for the competition this year.

The Condor Group had the pleasure of receiving the award for first place in the whole of NRW at the Business Ball at the Maritim Hotel at Düsseldorf Airport. "Starting in a garage, the company celebrated its 25th anniversary last year. The company is active worldwide and is a pioneer in the individual production of retractor systems for medicine. The medium-sized company and the founding and owning Schulte family are also very committed to society," says Dr. Helfried Schmidt, explaining the reason for the award. Among other things, the company has also built a kindergarten on the company premises. "It paid off to go down this path, even if it wasn't always easy. Today, I am very pleased that the company could be successfully handed over to the next generation to my two children Ira and Dominik," says the company founder Hermann-Josef Schulte together with his wife Maria, expressing great satisfaction about the award.

The foundation focuses on small and medium-sized enterprises. Despite crisis-ridden global economic and macroeconomic developments, entrepreneurial SMEs have created millions of new and additional jobs in recent years. However, these tremendous achievements are hardly perceived by the public. The aim is therefore to improve the public image of SME entrepreneurs, to raise public awareness of the connection between "healthy SMEs - strong economy - more jobs", to popularize examples of success and to create sustainable networks among SMEs. We were evaluated on this in five competition criteria:

1. Overall development of the company
2. Creation/securing of jobs and training positions
3. Modernization and innovation
4. Commitment in the region
5. Service and customer proximity, marketing.

Excellent performance in all five criteria is required. Failure to meet only one criterion may result in exclusion from further stages of the competition.

The city Salzkotten around mayor Ulrich Berger and economic promoter Peter Finke were allowed to accept the nationwide only special award "Municipality of the Year". "The development of the city Salzkotten is unique. It serves as a role model and Salzkotten can be very proud of this as a municipality," explained Dr. Helfried Schmidt as Managing Director of the Oskar Patzelt Foundation in his laudatory speech. As a company, we are very satisfied with the work of our administration, as was already shown in a survey conducted by the Chamber of Industry and Commerce last year. With over 90% satisfaction with the work of the administration from the point of view of the companies, the city of Salzkotten occupied one of the top places among the municipalities in the Paderborn district.

"Our heartfelt thanks go to Hans-Jürgen Altrogge of the BVMW (Bundesverband Mittelständische Wirtschaft, Kreis Paderborn), who nominated the city of Salzkotten as well as the Condor Group for these awards," said Ulrich Berger and Hermann-Josef Schulte.