Success in Sussex

Rayner celebrated 60 years of continuous manufacture of intraocular lenses at a special reception and banquet in Brighton’s Royal Pavilion today with the Award ceremony of the 2009 Queen’s Award for Enterprise in International Trade.

Her Majesty’s Lord Lieutenant in East Sussex, Mr Peter Field, accompanied by Deputy Lieutenant Mr Hugh Burnett were met and welcomed by Mr Donnie Munro, Chairman and Managing Director or Rayner Intraocular Lenses Limited. Mr Munro escorted the Lord Lieutenant and Deputy Lieutenant to the former royal palace’s Great Kitchen to be introduced to Rayner employees and the company’s distinguished guests. After the reception the Lord Lieutenant and the party moved through to the Pavilion’s Music Room to be formally welcomed by Mr D Munro and to hear an entertaining talk on Rayner by London eye specialist Mr Charles Claoué.

The award ceremony began with the Lord Lieutenant addressing the audience on the special nature of the Queen’s Award and stressing the strict criteria that Rayner had to meet to get the Award. The Reading of the Citation was made by Deputy Lieutenant Mr Hugh Burnett from a scroll signed by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and Prime Minister Gordon Brown. The glass bowl emblem was presented by the Lord Lieutenant to Mr Munro who in his in his acceptance response talked of the “great honour” the company took on in winning this award.

Dinner was served in the Pavilion Banqueting Room followed by a short video on the history of Rayner which started with an opticians’ shop in London 99 years ago. Next year the company will celebrate 100 years.

Munro emphasized that Rayner has deep roots in Sussex. That first shop in London was backed up by a workshop in Brighton. Through the century Rayner has always had a Brighton and Hove manufacturing base: Kemptown, Lorna Road, Wilbury Villas and today in Sackville Road. 
He saw the Queen’s Award as a testimony to the perseverance that Rayner people have shown – and the stubbornness – to make excellent medical devices. He paid tribute to all Rayner’s managers and staff in the last ninety-nine years, from the founder John Baptiste Reiner through to his own predecessor Ian Collins. Ian was not well enough to attend the celebration but he appeared in the video.

But present were three retired Rayner men who, “through their past efforts have made a big contribution to Rayner’s present success”:

• Christopher Morgan, the former Chairman of the Rayner Group, now retired, Christopher “gave us great encouragement over the years”.
• John Ingham former Director of Production. John made wonderful lenses from the 1950s through to the 1990s.
• Peter Brain was Export Manager in the 1990s and “established relationships with our international distributors – relationships which bore fruit in this last decade and that led to the Queen’s Award”.

“We are succeeding today because of the work they did, their dedication to the job and their risk-taking at times when all around them people were saying you will not succeed.”

Mr Munro went on to thank all the present employees and Rayner’s customers – in the UK and overseas; Rayner’s business partners, suppliers and especially to mention the two local organisations, Impact and Sightsavers: two Sussex-based charities that do so much good in the fight to eradicate blindness in the world.