The St. Lucia Manufacturers’ Association held its 4th Biennial Quality Awards ceremony at the Sandals Halcyon on Saturday April 14th with agro-processor Baron Foods Ltd winning the President’s Award for Excellence.

This, after it dominated the large business category securing 4 first place trophies for Leadership, Implementation of Standards and Best Practices, Product and Customer Service Quality and Human Resource Development.

St. Lucia Linen won the coveted Minister’s Award for Innovation and the Lawson Calderon Award for Eco-Manufacturing. Prior to that, they’d won One Gold Award, Three Platinum Awards and One Diamond Award for Social Responsibility.

Caribbean Awning and Harris Paints both won Diamond Awards with Top Stone Fabrication walking away with three Diamond and two Platinum Awards.

First time participant Ms. St. Rose Creole Delights, manufacturer of homemade jams and jellies, won two awards: a Platinum Award for Product and Customer Service Quality and a Diamond Award for Implementation of Standards and Best Practices.

Brothers Tony and Dunstan Du Boulay of Du Boulay’s Bottling Company Ltd. were presented with special awards for 50 years in the manufacturing sector.

Fourteen companies participated in the SMA Quality Awards which is designed to help companies strengthen their management systems and processes for high performance through adopting the performance excellence framework.

The judging process involved detailed performance appraisals by local and international auditors, as well as the St. Lucia Bureau of Standards. The Quality Awards are benchmarked against world-class standards.

This year the larger Companies were judged separately so that the Medium and Micro Companies do not feel that they are competing with the larger establishments. A scoring system was used to determine the 1st, 2nd and 3rd place winners.