After two years in which it has seen off a recession, made major investments in new plant and products, and tweaked its brand and labelling, the fruit-processing company and exporter last week won the supreme award at the South Canterbury Chamber of Commerce Business Excellence Awards.
The company also won the Primary and Manufacturing category award.
Managing director Michael Barker said that with 250 people, comprising staff and their partners, set to celebrate the company's milestone tomorrow night, the award could not have come at a better time.
"We are chuffed, absolutely stoked.
It's been fun wandering around the business carrying the spoils and showing the team and telling them they can be proud of themselves.
That's what an award like this is all about.
"The past two years have been huge. Everybody has worked their butts off."
In 2007, the company bought the Anathoth brand of jams and pickles, and since last year has been manufacturing Anathoth products in a purpose-built extension of its factory in Pleasant Valley, 8km from Geraldine.
Last year the company formed a joint venture with Christchurch-based Tandoori Palace to make and market its supermarket range of Indian sauces, and it is now in the process of rolling out new country-of-origin labelling that also carries the company's new brand "Barker's of Geraldine".
Mr Barker said the rebranding was designed to set it apart from the multi-national giants that it competed against across much of its product range.
"We make a big effort to retain a special culture in our business. We are still on the corner of the family farm in the middle of the countryside.
"It's important for the company to retain this as a point of difference, because we are not a high-profile business - even in South Canterbury.
"We are not statically sitting on our laurels. We are still innovating and striving."
Mr Barker said last year had been particularly tough for the company, with fluctuating commodity prices, especially of fruit and sugar, posing a major challenge.
A judge at the Business Excellence Awards, Timaru accountant Stephen McFarlane, said Barker's of Geraldine was a well-run business that was successful in the markets that it operated in and had showed "that extra edge" among a high-quality group of finalists.
Mr McFarlane said New Zealand was not as good as other countries at recognising business success and it was especially important to do so during difficult economic times.
"I think it is underestimated just how challenging it is to be in business at the moment. [The award finalists] have worked hard to get where they are."
The management of high-achieving companies could be compared with elite sports people in terms of what it took to be successful, he said.
The Barker's brand was born in 1969, when Mr Barker's father, Anthony Barker, turned his homemade elderberry wine into the first in a range of fruit liqueurs and wines that formed the company's early product range.