Welcome to our special supplement revealing the shortlisted entrants in the fifth Bradford Means Business Awards.

This is the fifth year we have run the awards, with our partners Bradford Council and the West and North Yorkshire Chamber of Commerce, and we can honestly say they are going from strength to strength.

Each year we find ourselves surprised not only at the volume of entries we receive for each of our ten categories, but also the quality of those entries.

It would be easy to think that after five years the best of the Bradford district's businesses had already entered the competition and won all the top prizes.

But every year we are finding that businesses who have not previously been involved in the competition are getting involved.

Some of this, of course, is down to the fact that as the country leaves the grip of the recession behind, new companies are starting up. We have a category, New Business of the Year, to reflect this.

But we are also finding that established companies who have previously not entered the competition are seeing just how important and valuable the Bradford Means Business Awards can be to their business.

We have 11 categories in total - one of those being the Winner of Winners award, which is given to one of the winners from the ten main categories - and once again we would like to thank the individual sponsors of those awards; local businesses who have discovered that one of the best ways to give something back to the local business community is to get behind one of our competition categories.

This year we have a brand new category, Apprentice of the Year, which will be awarded to the young person who has excelled in their chosen trade. Apprenticeships are a vital and hugely important path to employment, especially for a district such as Bradford with a high rate of youth unemployment.

Over the next few pages you will be able to read about the firms and individuals who have made the cut to the three-strong shortlists in each of our categories.

It was a tough job for the judges to whittle the entries down to just three, and while it might seem like a cliche, from reading the entries and nominations there really are no losers in these awards.

So the gala awards night on Saturday June 13 at the Aagrah Midpoint restaurant in Thornbury - where Westfield's UK operations director Peter Miller will give the keynote speech, and which will be jointly hosted by BBC Look North presenter Charlotte Leeming and myself - will be a celebration of success and achievement and proof positive that Bradford really does mean business.