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Bass Coast Business Awards 2023 announces finalists from increased community involvement and applications

The Bass Coast Business Awards 2023 announced finalists for Judged Categories and People's Choice Awards, celebrating local businesses' achievements and contributions.

By news@gippsland - 21st July 2023 - Back to News

The Bass Coast Business Awards have announced Finalists for 2023 and we are thrilled to share and celebrate all businesses involved. In what is the 16th year of the awards. The Bass Coast Business Awards are split into two categories - the Judged Categories and the People's Choice Awards. The judged categories are self-nominated by Bass Coast-based businesses and events.

The 2023 Bass Coast Business Awards announce finalists in Judged and People's Choice categories, celebrating businesses for the 16th year

Events excellence recognized

Our new Events Excellence award that celebrates festivals, events and exhibitions in the regions was particularly well received with ten event organisers entering their Bass Coast-based event. This year's categories were judged by an independent panel of six industry experts from the business community. In addition to the judged awards, voters have nominated their favourite business via the People's Choice Awards.

The Bass Coast Business Awards will be presented on Friday 27 October at the Gala Dinner, Cape Paterson Life Saving Club. We had an enormous response for the People's Choice Awards categories this year with more than 2300 votes celebrating local businesses. This is nearly double the amount of votes from last year and we thank the community for their increasing involvement in celebrating local businesses in our region.

Reflecting on success

This year we had 54 applications from businesses in construction, hair and beauty, health, hospitality, manufacturing, visitor economy, retail and professional services. 35 businesses applied for the awards, with 25 first-time businesses getting involved.

John Dickie, Wildlife Coast Cruises, winner of 2022 Business of the Year, 2022 Environmental Sustainability award winner and 2022 Accommodation and Tourism Attraction People's Choice award winner said "applying for the Bass Coast Business Awards gives us the valuable opportunity to reflect on our achievements every year.

I look forward to assessing ourselves in a sense of how far we have come, and it gives us the chance to sit down and talk about our goals within each category as a business for the future and how we aim on getting to that next place. It sparks important conversations within the team and gives us a sense of pride when we can write out our accomplishments.

Business awards success

Attending the awards is always a fantastic opportunity to recognise the successes of other businesses in the area, it's a great time to network and collaborate". Harley Schinagl of TerraLab was the winner of council's 2022 Business Innovation Award, being crowned Innovate with nbn Grant Program Agriculture category winner and overall Champion. Harley has expressed how much winning this meant to him and TerraLab.

"Our award sponsor was NBN Co. After winning, the NBN Co rep encouraged us to enter their own national Innovation awards, of which we not only won our category, but the overall national prize. So the outcome stemming from the Bass Coast award was quite significant for us and has given us some additional opportunities as well" he said.

Judging panel

This year's applications are judged by six industry professionals from:

Kim Storey (Destination Phillip Island)
Andrea Evans-McCall (Countries University Centre)
Rebecca Massaro (Interchange Gippsland), Heidi Hamm (Sustainability Victoria)
Melissa Cashman (Phillip Island Nature Parks) and Jennifer Carroll (GoTo Solutions)

The judges generously volunteer their time to support the Business Awards. We would like to thank Sponsors for this year's awards which include:

Harman Wines (Business of the Year)
Interchange Gippsland (Access, Equity and Inclusion)
Corio (Business Innovation)
Westernport Water (Environmental Sustainability)
rEVENTS Academy (Event Excellence)
Destination Phillip Island (Marketing and Communications)
Small Business Mentoring Service (Resilience)
Food and Fibre Gippsland (celebration night) and nbn Local (photography)

For more information, please visit the 2023 Bass Coast Business Awards or contact council's Business Support Team on 1300 BCOAST (226 278) or (03) 5671 2211 or email business.support@basscoast.vic.gov.au.