Car.co.uk wins the King's Award for Enterprise, what it means for van sellers

In April 2026, Car.co.uk, the company that powers every Vansold offer, was awarded the King’s Award for Enterprise in the Innovation category.

It’s the highest business honour the Crown can bestow in the UK. And for those of us who have been doing this for twenty years, it means something.

What the award recognises

The King’s Award for Enterprise: Innovation is given to businesses that have demonstrated outstanding innovation, in product, process, or service, over a sustained period. The assessment is rigorous: independent verification of claims, evidence of commercial impact, and scrutiny of whether the innovation is genuinely novel or just a repackage.

For Car.co.uk, the award recognises the way we price end-of-life vehicles. Most of the market still treats a van or car as a weight of scrap metal. We built a model that prices it as a parts and salvage asset, one that pays for working engines, gearboxes, body panels, EGR systems, and AdBlue tanks rather than lumping it all into a steel-price calculation and hoping the seller doesn’t know better.

That model is what powers Vansold.

Why it matters for van sellers

You might wonder what an award has to do with the number you get when you type your reg in.

It has everything to do with it.

The pricing model behind Vansold is the same innovation the award recognises. When a Ford Transit Custom at 120,000 miles gets quoted £800 where a scrap-only buyer would offer £260, that gap exists because of years of investment in the data, the salvage partnerships, and the operational infrastructure to make it work at scale.

The award is independent confirmation that the approach works. It isn’t a PR exercise, the assessment doesn’t care about marketing. It cares about whether the thing actually does what it claims to do.

A fifth award, and what it represents

This is my fifth King’s or Queen’s Award, having received four during my time at Recycling Lives Ltd, in 2010, 2014, 2018, and 2019. Each one came from building something that changed how an industry handled a problem it had been ignoring.

The pattern is the same here. The UK van disposal market is opaque, fragmented, and routinely unfair to sellers. Vansold is the clearest version of what Car.co.uk has built, a tool that gives every van seller, whether they’re disposing of a fleet or a single ageing Transit, the information they need to make the right decision.

The award doesn’t change how Vansold works. But it’s worth knowing who you’re dealing with when you put your reg in.

What happens next

The award is held for five years (it expires April 2028). During that time, we’re required to use the emblem correctly and attribute the award to Car.co.uk and the New Reg group, which is why you’ll see the King’s Award logo in our footer and on our about page.

For Vansold users, nothing changes. Same offer process. Same no-deduction guarantee. Same same-day collection. Just a bit more confidence in the people delivering it.

If you’ve got a van to shift, enter your reg below. Two minutes. One fair number.