Business owners and representatives were invited to attend an event celebrating some of the most inspiring enterprising young people in Gwent, who battled it out for top honours in the Newport and Monmouthshire Young Enterprise finals yesterday.

Teams from schools across the region competed against each other for honours at the City Campus, the University of South Wales, Newport.

The event was the culmination of six months of hard work for 250 sixth form students from across Newport and Monmouthshire who have taken part in the company programme.

The entrepreneurs have been running their own companies covering a range of business activities since last autumn including raising initial share capital, designing their product or service and selling it directly to customers.

They were judged upon short company presentations given on the day, the quality of their trade stands and a final company report which are all presented by the students in front of an audience of prominent business leaders and eminent academics.

The judging panel included Liz Maher, director of Newport-based Centurion VAT Specialists; Gareth Morgan, director of Liberty Marketing; Lewis Lewis, director of Newport-based Evento by Viaggio UK, and Howard Thompson, regional manager, Centre for Business.

The winners will go forward to compete in the Young Enterprise Wales final in June.

Newport and Monmouthshire Board chairman Kath Lewis, of Newport-based IAC Ltd, said: “We must encourage enterprise and entrepreneurship in our schools and colleges to achieve future business success in Wales. There is no doubt that some of Wales’ business brains of the future will be competing against each other in the Newport and Monmouthshire Young Enterprise final next week.”

Young Enterprise is a UK registered education charity on a mission to inspire and equip young people to learn and succeed through enterprise. Each year, more than 320,000 young people get a head start on their working lives while they are still at school or university.