A textile firm making ground-breaking fabrics from materials such as harvested nettles and recycled coffee sacks has been named a winner of industry’s most coveted award.

Camira Group, which has its headquarters at Mirfield and manufacturing at Meltham, has won its fourth Queen’s Award. It is the second time that the company has been recognised in the category for sustainable development. Camira has also won Queen’s Awards in the past for innovation and international trade.

Camira is among 141 UK businesses and six individual winners of the Queen’s Award this year – the 50th anniversary of the awards. The awards recognise outstanding achievements in the areas of international trade, innovation and sustainable development. This year, 105 firms won for international trade with 24 for innovation and 12 for sustainable development.

David Cameron toured the Camira Fabrics factory on Meltham Mills Road with Jason McCartney, the Conservative candidate for the Colne Valley seat as part of his general election campaigning.

The latest accolade recognises Camira’s outstanding achievements in sustainable product design, supply chain initiatives, waste saving and recycling as well as people development and corporate social responsibility.

Its latest fabrics are made from wool, flax and recycled coffee bean sacks which are pulled back to fibre,

The firm, which has 650 employees, manufactures more than 8m metres of fabric a year and sells to 70 countries worldwide – providing fabrics for office chairs and dividers in places such as bank and call centres as well as bus and train seats for customers including FirstGroup and the London Underground.

Camira is a pioneer in environmental textiles, innovating a whole range of eco-labelled fabrics made from wool blended

with natural fibres such as nettles and hemp grown on UK farms under licence from the Home Office..

Last year, Camira used more than 4,000 tonnes of raw materials and achieved virtually zero landfill at its largest 210,000sq ft site at Meltham – at the same time reducing both energy consumption and water usage.

The firm runs a modern apprenticeship scheme as part of the Entice Project, which is recognised nationally as a model system to recruit, retain and develop the skills and business stars of the future.

Camira’s charity fund-raising arm, known as Camira Hope, supports Huddersfield’s Forget Me Not Children’s Hospice and Kirkwood Hospice. Further afield, it supports the New Zealand Whale and Dolphin Trust to protect the endangered Hector’s Dolphin.

Commenting on the Queen’s Awards success, Camira chief executive Steve Bullas said: “This is the pinnacle of achievement in terms of recognition for our proactive stance putting sustainable development at the very heart of our business model.

“It not only gives us a unique competitive advantage, but it’s great for our wider stakeholders and the communities in which we work and do business.”

Pictures from Mr Cameron's visit