IT HAS been another challenging year for Hull and East Yorkshire businesses.
However, many firms across the region have been growing in spite of economic challenges, taking on new staff, winning contracts and manufacturing or designing new products and services that have helped put the area on the map.
Equally important are those firms that have defied the odds to preserve existing jobs.
The Yorkshire International Business Convention gives successful organisations the chance to celebrate their success while recharging peoples' batteries with a day filled with inspiration and energy.
This is why the Mail is proud to show its support for the event, and the YIBC is as important date in our calendar as it is yours.
As the region's most comprehensive and biggest selling guide to businesses in this region, the Mail brings you the big stories and breaking news while exploring the issues that matter to you.
But without your success, we would not be able to deliver the news we do.
Today we are calling on Hull and East Yorkshire businesses to help us raise a toast to your achievements by entering the Mail News & Media Business Awards 2013.
Now in its 13th year, the awards have long been a highlight of the region's business calendar.
Entries are now open and the celebration dinner will take place on Thursday, November 21, at the Willerby Manor.
Neil Hodgkinson, editor of Mail News & Media, said: "The interest in these awards in the past few months has obviously been gratifying but, more importantly, it shows there is still a great determination among local firms, employees and entrepreneurs to succeed in a consistently difficult climate."
Joining the list of winners last year was the historic Hull-based John Good & Sons Ltd (the John Good Group of Companies), which won the prestigious Business of the Year Award.
Managing director Alan Platt said: "Over the years, we have seen many other local companies entering the awards and having success in them, and we realised it was one of those things in which you have to put your hat in the ring in order to be recognised.
"It is OK standing by and watching others get recognition but at some stage you have to test the water and put yourself forward."
