The award, which was in the innovation category, was in recognition of FFEI's development of a CTP system that could meet the lower investment cost common to emerging markets without compromising on image quality, production speed, or automation.

Andy Cook, managing director of FFEI, said: "We are delighted to receive the Queen's Award for this British innovation which has achieved success in price-sensitive markets against stiff international and domestic competition.

"The number of CTP units now selling into emerging markets far exceeds our initial expectations.  For example, our technology has been market leader in India for the last 18 months with over 150 FFEI CTP installations."

The main barrier to producing a low cost CTP was the internal cast aluminium drum. Aside from needing casting, ageing and machining, this central element was at the mercy of soaring raw material prices.

FFEI therefore invested £1m in research, ongoing development, and tooling, in order to switch to a Zanite Polymer Composite for the production of its internal drums.

This high strength epoxy resin is mixed with selected ceramic additives to give accuracy and ease of use when casting and has excellent thermal and mechanical stability, as well as a lower carbon footprint.

Bob Wilson, director of innovation at FFEI, said: "Zanite castings are manufactured to extremely tight tolerances and the resulting parts outperform those made using traditional materials such as steel and aluminium.

"We started making just the smaller drums in Zanite but quickly extended this to other castings for our new range of CTP engines for emerging markets. In fact, the project was so successful that we not only improved the value proposition of FFEI CTP for the target markets but now use Zanite extensively in our other products."

FFEI's latest Queen's Award comes just under 10 years after it picked up its first, also in the Innovation category, for its advances in multi-beam expose technology.