Mcdonald's Operators Win Award

OWNER/ operators of the McDonald's Hunter St mall, Newcastle, store, Rick and Trena Robinson, have won the 1997 Improvement Award.

The local restaurant was selected from more than 630 McDonald's restaurants across the country for continually striving to be the best.

The award recognises the effort each manager and crew puts into making customers feel welcome when they visit the restaurant by creating a clean and comfortable environment.

INDUSTRIAL Galvanizers Corporation, founded in Newcastle in 1968, has just opened its second plant in North America at Petersburg, Virginia.

The $7.5million plant, which employs a staff of75, contains the largest galvanizing kettle on the east coast of the United States of America.

The company opened its first American plant in Tampa, Florida, in 1996. Industrial Galvanizers has only recently commissioned plants in Malaysia, Vietnam, the Philippines and Indonesia.

SCOTT Pfeiffer, the Mortgage Choice franchisee for the Newcastle/Lake Macquarie area, has been named in the top 10 home loan writers in Australia and New Zealand.

Mortgage Choice, established in 1992, is Australia's largest independent mortgage broker providing a service that allows home buyers to check out a variety of loans from a range of lenders in the privacy of their home or office.

`With more than 250 types of home loans from a pool of 22 different financial institutions, including major and regional banks, building societies, credity unions, mortgage managers and insurance companies, Mortgage Choice customers save time, effort and money,' Mr Pfeiffer said.

NEWCASTLE Regional Chamber of Commerce will make a formal submission to the House of Representative's Standing Committee on Financial Institutions and Public Administration inquiry into banking services in regional Australia.

Chamber general manager Mr David Simmons said the response from a survey of members and other chambers throughout the region had encouraged the chamber to lodge a formal submission.

`Chambers throughout the Hunter have members disadvantaged by the rationalisation processes undertaken by various banks over the past few years. A total of 25 bank branches have been closed in the Hunter since 1994,' Mr Simmons said.

The Standing Committee public hearings will be held from March, next year.

TRANSGRID, of Waratah, who maintain the high voltage transmission lines from the generating stations throughout NSW, has won an engineering excellence award for maintenance management.

The award was awarded by the Institution of Engineers.