John Thompson, the most frequent winner of the Chairman’s Award since its inception in 2012, was once again triumphant in winning this much sought-after top prize for business excellence in the difficult and incident-packed 2021/22 financial year.
In a year peppered with incidents ranging from severe unrest and floods in KwaZulu to violence-marred strikes in Gauteng, as well as the emergence of frequent load-shedding countrywide and the continued threat of the COVID-19 pandemic, both of which further disrupted business operations, besides exacerbating the hardships of South Africa’s already long-suffering population – the poor especially – John Thompson succeeded against the odds in turning out a scintillating performance.
It ticked all the right boxes in, firstly, achieving earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) growth of 13% over the previous year, secondly, an extremely high cash conversion level of 65%, and thirdly, a highly impressive growth in export orders of 53%.
John Thompson also scored very high marks on all four of the other criteria that are taken into account in measuring the performance of divisions competing for the Chairman’s Award, achieving a Level 1 black economic empowerment (BEE) rating and attaining 97% for risk management, 98% for environmental performance and a lost time injury frequency rate (LTIFR) of 0.39.
The Chairman’s Award presentations form part of ACTOM’s Annual Review meeting, which was held this year at Emperor’s Palace, Kempton Park, on June 28. Chairman Andries Mthethwa and Group CEO Mervyn Naidoo shared the duty of presenting the awards in the various categories that the competition covers.
ACTOM Turbo Machines – in which Metalplus is included as a business unit in this division – came a close second to John Thompson in winning the Runner-up Award in the divisional contest section of the competition, with Marthinusen & Coutts named sole winner of a Divisional Certificate of Excellence.
In the competition’s business units section, four units were selected as winners of Business Unit Certificates of Excellence, these being John Thompson’s Utility Boilers & Environmental unit, ACTOM Industry, Static Power and ACTOM Electrical Products. Business units are assessed in the competition solely on the basis of the EBIT growth and cash flow levels they achieve during the year under review.
Finally, the award for the best semi-technical article in What’s Watt during the past year went to Rhett Kelly, MV Switchgear’s Design & Development Manager, for his article in the December 2021 issue of the magazine entitled “MV Switchgear completes type tests on new SBV4XE switchgear product”.
