Manufacturer of the year

Winner

Spaceover

It's only been in business for four years but already Spaceover is turning over £7m and has secured £18m of contracts this year. How did it do it? By coming up with a revolutionary modular systems for housing: Spaceover's Building System halves construction time compared with tradition build methods. Unsurprisingly, housing associations are lapping it up - signing framework agreements worth millions of pounds. It also has impeccable eco-credentials - one of its building types can be dismantled , moved, refurbished or entirely recycled. Not bad for a business that was just a start-up in 2002.

Spaceover worked with the Peabody Trust using its modular systems on the funky Baron’s Place in west London

Runners up

Cladding Solutions

How do you combine the strength of concrete with the versatility of fibreglass? That was the challenge Cladding Solutions took on when it started to develop Fibre C - an ultra-thin concrete panel that is both flexible and tough. At 13 mm thick it weighs just 26.5 kg/m2, making it ideal for off-site manufacture, facade cladding and interior walls. And when the product development was complete, the team at CSL turned its efforts to creating a five-star service for specifiers in the form of www.claddingsolutions.com to help them through every stage.

Ibstock Brick

Ibstock is doing its bit to make the building industry sustainable. Over the past six years it has put £45m back into its factories to increase energy efficiency, it's made sure its bricks contain up to 10% of recycled material, and it spends £38m a year recovering packaging material from clients. In the past 24 months it's also developed 32 brick types in and introduced new ranges such as Intelligent Brickwork and Elemix rainscreen cladding. You can see why the Ministry of Defence chose it as preferred cladding supplier on its £1bn SLAM programme.

Marley Eternit

This firm is a prolific provider of roofing and cladding solutions - launching 20 main products in just two years. Customers enjoy increased choice and the environment benefits from sustainable products like the SolarTile and coatings made of recycled materials. With a 100-year reputation, Marley Eternit keeps striving for improvements in the workplace - implementing its zero-accident-rate policy and insisting all managers obtain a "safety passport". Expect its next 100 years to be just as impressive.

Paroc Panel System UK

Paroc is at the cutting edge of off-site manufacturer. A specialist in composite panel systems, it has come up with an ingenious innovation that allows panels to span more than 8 m without secondary support. This reduces labour and material costs and cuts down time on site, so everyone's a winner. Paroc has also made the panels thermally efficient so when the building is complete its CO2 emissions are reduced. Two other innovations are worthy of note: its sound-absorbing acoustic panel and a fireproof system that insulates heat for more than four hours.

Wavin Plastics

If you have a water drainage problem, Wavin is the specialist you call. In the last three years it has spent £6.5m on new products - the most recent of which is AquaCell Lite, a storm water management system for non-trafficked sites. It's also held trials for Barratt Homes on a rainwater re-use system for an Eco-Homes development and teamed up with Miller Homes on a high-density housing project. And the hard work's paid off: in 2005 when the cost of raw materials and energy rose, Wavin plastics managed to achieve an 8% year-on-year growth.