Business West Chambers of Commerce walked away as one of five champions at the World Chambers Competition.

The team scooped Best Job Creation and Business Development project, which aims to maximise international trade as a means of benefitting business in South West England, beating off stiff competition from Colombia, Turkey, Philippines and Iran.

Organised by the ICC World Chambers Federation, this year's competition was held in Sydney, Australia. The only awards programme of its kind, the biennial competition originally received 53 applications from chambers, representing 27 countries.

Recognising chambers for their forward-looking approaches to solve some of today's global challenges, 18 finalists competed across four diverse categories, each presenting their ground-breaking initiatives to an international judging panel, and many of the 1,000 delegates attending the biennial Congress.

James Monk, commercial director of Business West said: "We are delighted to win this award as recognition of achieving almost half a billion pounds worth of additional export sales and creating nearly 4000 new jobs.

"The launch of our International Trade Centre was instrumental in helping Business West to achieve a 40 per cent increase in our website traffic, 250 per cent more potential first time exporters using our services, and our social media channels saw more engagement than ever before.

"All of this has been against a challenging national and global backdrop where instability currently tops the media and business agenda in the UK. Yet we have seen that businesses still want to do business with each other.

"By changing the way we talked about export to smaller companies, bringing all elements of business support under one-roof, using our global network of chambers and private sector partners, and removing the friction between buyers and sellers, we can ensure that, despite what the politicians are doing, we can still drive business growth and success for our members.

"Never has our chamber and the global network been so relevant in driving jobs and growth."

David Riches, executive director, commercial, trade and marketing for the British Chambers of Commerce, added his congratulations.

"This is a tremendous achievement. Through their work, Business West has helped create thousands of jobs, and generated millions of pounds of new export business. They are a shining example for chambers both in the UK and around the world, for how to boost trade in local business communities."

Business West represents more than 21,000 businesses in the south west, including the network of Chambers of Commerce members in the region.

Picture caption: staff at Business West Head Office celebrate their win at the World Federation Congress competition 2017