A CHEMICAL importer from Leigh has been named as a finalist in the Entrepreneur of the Year Awards organised by Ernst & Young.

Peter Hutchinson, managing director of B&H Polymers, joins 17 other business people from the North-west to be named in the awards.

The winners will be announced in a glittering ceremony at Leeds Town Hall on June 21.

The awards celebrate the achievements of outstanding entrepreneurs who have grown dynamic and innovative businesses.

The regional winners will go forward to the national final in London in October.

Mr Hutchinson's career started in his father's Lancashire textiles firm after leaving college in the 1970s.

He founded Leigh-based B&H Polymers Ltd in 1992 using personal savings to purchase Malaysian PET resin - a raw material used to produce bottles and containers.

Today the company provides a full logistics, importation and credit service and is now an agent earning commission to an independent PET trader and distributor.

B&H has offices in the US, Far East, Western Europe and Russia and boasted a turnover for the year ended March 2004 of £65 million.