RP team of Blue Circle family is global champion

The Philippine team of the international Blue Circle family proudly won the top prize in the recently held Blue Circle Industries Chief Executive’s Performance Excellence Award competition in Amsterdam.

Outstanding resoucefulness and forward-looking ingenuity amid extremely adverse business conditions brought out the best in the Philippine team which bested counterparts in six other countries – Chile, the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Greece and Malaysia. The finalist countries were selected from 12 entries representing Blue Circle operations worldwide.

The competition awards the prize to the team that shows the most impact on bottom line results through vision, determination, and teamwork. In the case of the winning team, Blue Circle Philippines (BCP) was represented by Yvette Tingcang (Material manager, Iligan Cement Corp.) Meg San Pedro (Group Treasury manager – Blue Circle Philippines (BCP), Baby Francisco (Group Controller – BCP), and Joanne Healy (vice president, Human Resources, BCP).

The group presentation aptly dubbed "An Integration of Integrations" depicted how the Philippine team had put together an impressive set of legal and operational initiatives that boosted performance and bottomlines. This was accomplished despite extreme business conditions marked by rising competition and imports, prolonged slump in demand and a host of other complicating issues.

The legal integration brought five businesses together as one entity through a share-swap – one of the most complex integration achieved within Blue Circle. The operations integration centralized five previously separate head office functions, and created employee teams from across the group’s operations who were tasked with designing "best practice" policies and procedures in key functions.

"In winning the top prize, the Philippine Blue circle team has proved to the world the inherent strengths and world-quality mettle of Filipinos. We are all very proud that the true Filipino spirit for excellence and team spirit is very much alive in Blue Circle Philippines," Peter Hoddinott, president of Blue Circle Philippines said.

Judges consisting of both Blue Circle and external representatives stated that they were ‘staggered’ by the Philippine team’s story and by what had been achieved in such a short space of time.