Brazilian company WEG was distinguished by Iberdrola as 2018 Supplier of the Year at an event which also recognised another 11 companies from eight nationalities in different categories.
Iberdrola handed over its 2018 Global Supplier of the Year Awards, whose purpose is to incentivize, promote and acknowledge the work of its suppliers, key to achieving the companies’ strategic objectives.
Specifically, Iberdrola has rewarded the commitment of its suppliers in the fields of excellence, sustainable development, quality, internationalisation, innovation, corporate social responsibility, job creation and occupational risk prevention.
The event took place at the auditorium of Iberdrola’s Campus in San Agustín del Guadalix (Madrid), was attended by some 340 guests, including representatives of 167 global suppliers of the group across different countries and industries.
Also in attendance were the Group’s Chairman, Ignacio Galán, the Business CEO, Francisco Martínez Corcoles, the group’s CFO José Sainz Armada, the global Director of the Liberalised Business, Aitor Moso, and Renovables, Xabier Viteri and the Director of Procurement and Insurance, Asís Canales.
Galán highlighted in his speech that “together with our suppliers we are addressing the important challenges posed by the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Companies – large and small – are making a key contribution to the realisation of the new agenda.”
He also underlined that “Iberdrola will continue to be an engine of industrial growth in the countries where it operates, exerting a significant pull effect on thousands of suppliers around the world”.
Key element to deliver the investment plan
Iberdrola’s chairman stated that “only competitive, innovative, efficient and responsible professionals can help us meet our future plans. A future that we see as being green and digital”.
Iberdrola, which provides jobs for 400,000 people through its global procurement, expects to award contracts worth €9 billion by the year’s end, 5% more than the previous year, to thousands of suppliers around the world. Most of the contracts have benefitted suppliers from the company’s core countries – the United States, Brazil, the United Kingdom Mexico and Spain -, as well as companies from countries where the Group is developing major initiatives, such as Portugal and France.
Some of the most relevant contracts are related to projects currently being built, like the East Anglia One offshore wind farm in the United Kingdom, the Támega hydroelectric complex in Portugal, the solar photovoltaic plant of Nuñez de Balboa in Spain, the electricity transmission projects in Brazil and the Coyote, Otter Creek, Karankawa and Montague offshore wind farms in the United States.
The award-winning companies hail from eight countries
The 2018 Global Supplier of the Year Awards are divided into 12 categories: Supplier of the Year; Equipment; Service Quality and Response; Energy Services; Non-energy Services; Environment; CSR; Competitiveness and Innovation; Diversity and Equality; Occupational Health and Safety; Construction Services and Internationalisation.
The Supplier of the Year award went to Brazilian manufacturer WEG, which has become the Group’s main supplier of transformers and has production centres in three countries that are especially important for Iberdrola, Brazil, Mexico and the United States, in which it contributes to generating local employment – more than 29,000 workers-.
In the Equipment section the winner was the company Schneider Electric (France), a historic Iberdrola supplier who has always stood out for its service quality and response and who has been rewarded for its support in the deployment of smart grids in Spain. In the Service Quality and Response category, the winner was the US company Northline Utilities, for its quick, flexible and efficient response in resolving incidents caused by storms.
The Spanish company Integral Management Future, with headquarters in Galicia, won the award in the Energy Services category for the highly efficient operating and maintenance work it provides Iberdrola’s renewable energies business in Europe. The Non-energy Services went to the Dutch company SHL, which did some impeccable work during the transport and assembly phases of the East Anglia One marine wind farm’s offshore substation, a project of unprecedented scale in the renewables sector worldwide.
The prize in the Environment category was won by Aecom (United Kingdom) for its impact assessment concerning the electricity grid activities, carried out along with ScottishPower and Scottish Wildlife Trust. The Mexican company Fonabec A.C., which collaborates in the Iberdrola Involve corporate volunteering project, received the award in the CSR section for its support, since the year 2000, to more than 13,000 underprivileged young people in Mexico to ensure they can continue with their secondary and higher education.
The award winner in the Competitiveness and Innovation category was Innova-TSN (Spain), in acknowledgement of its commitment to technological development as one of its main development areas, embodied in the innovative development of the Customer Intelligence Platform tool.
The Diversity and Equality award acknowledged the work of the Brazilian company ITB Equipamentos Eletricos, which, apart from obtaining a high score in the CSR Scoring in Brazil, has been demonstrating its firm commitment to equality, diversity and women’s rights, also carrying out actions with university students and groups at risk of exclusion.
Brown & Mason (United Kingdom) won the award in the Occupational Health and Safety category for its excellent occupational safety record during the Longannet demolition works, the thermal powerstation at which it spent over 200,000 hours carrying out waste removal. The closure of this coal-fired plant, which used to be the biggest in Europe, came in the context of Iberdrola’s firm commitment to decarbonising the economy.
The Construction Services award went to thePortuguese company Socorpena, for its promotion of local employment in the works carried out at the Támega river hydroelectric complex, and, finally, the award forInternationalisation was collected by the Guipuzcoa company Ibermática, for its long career supporting Iberdrola in information technology and corporate system deployment projects and works internationally.
About Iberdrola
Iberdrola is a global energy leader, the biggest producer of wind power and one of the five top power companies in the world in terms of stock market capitalisation. The group is present in numerous countries and supplies energy to over 100 million people mainly in Spain, the United Kingdom (Scottish Power), the USA (AVANGRID), Brazil (Neoenergia) and Mexico. With a workforce of 34,000 and assets in excess of €110 billion, it posted revenues of over €31.263 billion and a net profit of €2.8 billion in 2017.
Iberdrola leads the energy transition towards a sustainable model through investments in renewable energy, smart grids, large-scale energy storage and digital transformation, offering the most advanced products and services to its customers. Thanks to its commitment to clean energy, Iberdrola is one of the companies with the lowest emissions and an international benchmark for its contribution to the fight against climate change and for the sustainability of the planet. Iberdrola forms part of numerous international sustainability indices, among them the Dow Jones Sustainability Index and FTSE 4Good, and is considered one of the most sustainable electricity companies in the world.
