Stallion AI Services has been awarded the UK’s highest official award for British businesses, The Queen’s Award for Enterprise.
The Shropshire business, founded in 2000, achieved the accolade for excellence in innovation in honour of creating charity Nature’s SAFE and the work it does to preserve endangered species.
The award means the business can use the Queen’s Awards emblem for the next five years.
Founder and managing director Tullis Matson attributes the success to Stallion AI Services’ “dedicated team”.
“[The team has] a passionate commitment to excellence, and what we do for international sport as well as for the preservation of some of our rarest and most valuable gene pools,” he said.
“I and all the team at Stallion AI Services are hugely proud to win the most prestigious award in the business world. The Queen’s Award emblem is recognised globally, and the royal seal of approval helps to legitimise our work not only in the UK, but on the world stage. I simply couldn’t be prouder of the wonderful team who have achieved this.”
Nature’s SAFE is a living biobank, founded by Tullis to help save animals from extinction by indefinitely preserving live cells from endangered species.
The charity partners with accredited zoos to collect, process and store tissue and reproductive cell samples from threatened and endangered species.
“We passionately believe our genetic preservation service is highly innovative – a vital
resource to long-term species’ wellness and protection from damaging population loss and irreversible extinction,” said Tullis.
Stallion AI Services is mainly known as being one of the most advanced stallion semen collection and freezing centres in Europe.
Its specialist team has carried out more than 20,000 collections from over 1,200 stallions, from rare-breed ponies to Olympic stars. Its work with reproductive technologies has benefited equines and other species.
General manager Kate Ashmore said Stallion AI Services “continuously push the boundaries to make the impossible possible”.
“[This is] reflected in our ongoing investment in research and development that put us at the forefront of technological innovation and scientific discovery,” she added.
“Our semen collection and treatment process is the best in the world. To us, every stallion is a VIP and receives outstanding care and treatment from our passionate and hard-working team who lead the way in equine welfare.”
A spokesman added that ground-breaking work with the Rare Breeds Survival Trust and Chester Zoo has enabled Stallion AI Services to branch into cryopreserving semen from protected equines and other rare and endangered species.
“In 2020, in conjunction with Nottingham Trent University (NTU), Stallion AI Services bred the first Suffolk foal in the UK to have been born using sex-sorted semen from a genetically matched stallion, determined by NTU and the Rare Breeds Survival Trust,” he said.
“This combination of technologies is a major step towards securing the future for all critically endangered breeds threatened with extinction as a result of inbreeding.
“One of the highlights of 2021 was the result of a subsidiary company of Stallion AI Services, Gemini Genetics, who are uniquely partnered with world-leading pet cloning company, ViaGen Pets & Equine,successfully breeding the genetic clone of world-famous show jumping stallion Arko.”
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