The African Centre for Supply Chain (ACSC) has named the Nigerian Bottling Company (NBC), UAC Foods Ltd, GPC Energy and Logistics Ltd, MTN Nigeria and two others as winners in various categories of the 2023 Supply Chain Excellence Award.
The award ceremony, which took place in Lagos recently, saw the Nigerian Bottling Company emerging as the winner of the Supply Chain Excellence Award outshining Lafarge Africa, MTN Nigeria and International Breweries while GPC Energy and Logistics Ltd emerged as the winner of Supply Chain Excellence in Transport and Logistics in place of Transport Services Limited that was also nominated for the same award.
Owing to his outstanding achievements as supply chain manager within the period under review, Cephas Abubakar Sidiku Afebuameh, group director of Supply Chain at FMN won the Supply Chain Personality/Manager of the Year beating Kayode Momoh, general manager of Supply Chain at UAC Foods Ltd.
Kayode Momoh, general manager of Supply Chain at UAC Foods Ltd won the Procurement and Sourcing Excellence Award surpassing Raheem Adebayo, who was also nominated for the same award; UAC Foods Ltd beats Dangote Transport and Lafarge Africa to win the Sustainability and Green Supply Chain Award and NITT won the Capacity Building/Development Award beating School of Transport and Logistics, Lagos State University, Ojo and CELTRAS Uniport.
Meanwhile, MTN Nigeria plc won the Supply Chain Excellence Award in the Telecoms Sector as a result of its outstanding contributions to the industry, and it surpassed the record of other nominees while Starlink won the Supply Chain Excellence Award of the Year in the Agricultural sector.
Speaking at the second edition of the ACSC awards and dinner night held in Lagos recently, Obiora Madu, director general of the African Centre for Supply Chain, said the award held with the theme, ‘Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Supply Chain,’ was launched to recognise organisations in Nigeria that demonstrate excellence in their supply chain operations.
Madu said most of the companies selected as winners of the 2023 Supply Chain Excellence Awards are ready to deploy AI in their operations but many of them are not 100 percent Nigerian companies.
According to him, the Centre has received favourable feedback from the industry after the first edition of the award, which served as an encouragement for the Centre to push on.
“With better planning and more awareness, the second edition turned out to be a massive improvement on the first. The third edition promises to be bigger and better,” he assured.
Madu said the award aims to recognise outstanding achievement in supply chain management and reward companies that have attained the highest standards.
“The award highlights the importance of, and the opportunities offered by excellent supply chain management; celebrates the successes of the past year as an industry and provides a unique networking opportunity for Nigeria’s supply chain professionals,” he explained.
He listed the criteria for nomination of winners to include quality of contribution; significance of innovation to the industry; extent to which their supply chain solution creates competitive advantage for the company; depth of application; evidence of business benefits and collaboration with others.
