A King's Award for Innovation. Ten years in the making.

Some weeks stay with you. For the Reacton team, this has been one of them. Reacton Fire Suppression has been awarded the King’s Award for Enterprise in the Innovation category (the UK’s most prestigious business honour) personally approved by His Majesty The King, and we’re still processing quite how significant that is.

It’s been an emotional rollercoaster since we found out. The official announcement came on the 6th of May, and now we can finally share the news publicly. For a company built by a small, determined team over the last ten years, being recognised at this level means everything.

Ten years in the making

Reacton didn’t arrive at this point overnight. The company’s roots go back through its earlier work under Fireward, and over the past decade, the team has steadily built something genuinely world-class: a range of automatic fire suppression systems that protect the equipment, livelihoods, and lives of customers across the globe.

That journey has been built on a very specific kind of passion, not just for fire safety, but for getting things right. For not accepting that the existing approach was good enough. For finding better ways to protect machinery and the people who depend on it, even in the most hostile and hard-to-reach environments on earth.

Sam Malins, Reacton Founder, speaking with BBC Essex on the morning the news became public

“I think when you love what you do, and you just get on with it and you’ve got a massive passion for getting things right, all of that hard work has now been recognised.” - Sam Malins, Founder, Reacton

What we do, and why it matters

Reacton designs and manufactures automatic fire suppression systems for some of the toughest applications imaginable: the engine bays of mining vehicles, the hydraulic compartments of agricultural and construction machinery, waste processing equipment, marine installations, and more. These are environments where a fire can destroy equipment worth hundreds of thousands of pounds, and, more importantly, where people's safety depends on a system that works every time without fail.

Our systems work differently to most. Instead of relying on electrical sensors, control panels, and complex wiring, they use a special detection tube that runs through the area being protected. The tube itself senses the heat of a fire and releases the suppressant in the same moment - no power supply needed, no electronics to fail, no delay. Fewer parts, fewer points of failure, faster response when it matters.

That's the innovation the King's Award judges recognised. Not a single product, but a decade of engineering across a full range - each application thought through from first principles and refined through real-world deployment across sectors and continents.

A global business, built in the UK

Reacton started small. A handful of people, a workshop, and a conviction that fire suppression could be done better than the industry standard at the time. Everything that followed - every system, every product line, every market we've entered - has been engineered, built, and refined here in the UK.

That hasn't changed as we've grown. Our systems are now sold and installed around the world, protecting equipment across mining, agriculture, construction, waste, and marine sectors on multiple continents. In 2026, that global reach took another significant step forward with a new partnership with a US-headquartered organisation. But the heart of the business - the engineering, the manufacturing, the people who design and test every system - remains exactly where it started.

The King's Award recognises British innovation, and that's something we take real pride in. it's a clear, independent signal of quality, and one rooted in a decade of UK design and manufacturing.

What comes next

There's a lot to look forward to. In July 2026, Sam Malins from Reacton will attend a Royal Reception at St James's Palace and meet His Majesty The King - something Sam admits he "didn't think would ever happen." Closer to home, the Lord-Lieutenant will formally present the Award at our premises in the coming months. And the King's Awards Emblem will sit alongside our brand on products and communications through to May 2031.

Three moments. One for the team, one for the company, and one that will travel with our products into every market we serve.

To our team

Awards like this aren't won by one person, or one decision. They are won slowly. Through ten years of consistent, skilled, committed work by a team that cared deeply about what they were building.

To every engineer who refined a system. To every person who supported a customer in the field. To everyone who helped get Reacton to where it is today, this Award belongs to you.

To the entire Reacton team, past and present: thank you, and to every customer who trusted us with their equipment and their people, and every partner who helped us reach markets we couldn't have reached alone, this is as much yours as it is ours.