An entrepreneur who moved to Cumbria is already reaping the rewards of his move to the county to set up a new business.

Pádraig Canavan, originally from a small village in Ireland, moved to Carlisle just over a year ago, setting up Black Box - a company that provides high-tech security products.

The move has proved succesful - he just collected an award from a supplier and is set to take on new members of staff this year.

Mr Canavan previouslt spent 16 years working in a similar family business, before making the decision to go it alone.

Black Box has been named Distributor of the Year 2015 by one of its major suppliers, Ditec Entrematic in Italy. He says that Cumbria has proved a great place to start a new business, with several large populations within a two hour radius and a supportive business community. Although travelling won’t faze the businessman - he is from the small village of Borris in County Carlow, which is 120 km from Dublin. He told in-Cumbria: “The decision for Carlisle was based on a number of factors. “First I had some friends here who were good enough to put me up when I first came here and I gradually feel in love with the place. “We’ve now got clients and projects across the North of England as well as further afield and we’ve found some great partners in the security industry. “These companies were looking for someone to supply access and automation equipment and are now working with us.” Those partnerships with security companies, architects, facilities managers and others involved in the sector are one factor behind the success of Blackbox Security Solutions and the rapid sales growth of Ditec Entrematic systems and equipment in the UK. “Ditec is one of the biggest suppliers of access equipment in the world,” says Pádraig, “and its systems are a good balance of affordability, reliability and quality – we still get customers who are surprised by what we can deliver for their budgets. “We knew sales were good in 2015 but it was still a huge encouragement to receive the Distributor of the Year Award from Ditec’s Export Director, Massimo de Salvo, when I was at their plant in Milan.” Blackbox Security Solutions has worked on a variety of projects in different aspects of security in its first year and has several more in the planning stages. “One of the more unusual projects so far has been a massive metal gate for Steadman’s new factory in Carlisle. “That’s being fitted this month after being imported from Austria from a specialist engineering company. “It’s aluminium to keep the weight down, has been specially designed to work in the space available and it’s being fitted without disturbing deliveries and access as well.” The firm is set to hire three employees by the end of April.