Now the shortlist for the 2024 edition of the Supply Chain Excellence Awards has been revealed, the finalists will be preparing their presentations and looking forward to the awards ceremony on 28 October. The awards are known for their thorough judging procedure delivering valuable insights to entrants through feedback from a plethora of esteemed judges, who collectively hold over 750 years of experience.
With the next stage of the awards being the judging process, Logistics Manager is providing a look behind the curtain at some of the industry experts that will be deliberating shortlisted entries for the 2024 Supply Chain Excellence Awards. This piece will put a spotlight on some of the judges with extensive experience of the food and drink sector. Look out for more stories like this in the weeks to come, focusing on experts in other fields such as retail, as well as healthcare and pharmaceutical.
The first industry expert in today’s spotlight is Liz Edwards, director of supply, operations and sustainability at Lucky Saint. Based at Lucky Saint’s London pub, she is responsible for end-to-end supply including demand and supply planning, managing relationships with contract manufacture breweries, 3PL warehousing and customer logistics, and procurement.
Her 30-year career started with FMCG giants Nestlé and Unilever but she progressively worked for smaller companies in the consumer goods industry, spending eight years in start-ups Graze and Lucky Saint. She’s worked on projects of all sizes, starting new supply chains from scratch towards global development.
Edwards really enjoys the variety of supply chain; getting closer to customer and suppliers, process development, systems implementation and managing teams.
Another expert in the food and drink space judging this year’s awards is Ian Harbour, associate director of warehousing at Coca-Cola European Partners. His role is strategic in developing ideas, through to fruition for future competitiveness and sales demand, while ensuring the smooth high service delivery execution of the orders through a strong leadership team of around 50 managers.
Harbour is very driven, always looking for the next opportunity to ensure that all of his teams have the right tools to do the job and are engaged and motivated so they see coming to work as a good thing, not a problem.
Also judging the 2024 Supply Chain Excellence Awards is Nicole Kurz, group supply chain director at Lactalis UK and Ireland. Over the past 20 years, she has accumalated a huge amount knowledge in the FMCG environment, ranging from a small start-up company to industry leaders. Before joining Lactalis, she previously worked for Unilever, Nestlé Purina, Safeway and Method Products.
Kurz has continued to develop her career after graduating with a Batchelor of Commerce in Supply Chain, Marketing and Business Management from the University of KwaZulu-Natal. She has broadened her supply chain knowledge to include all aspects of supply chain, production, planning, finance, quality and commercial aspects.
A strong leader with a strength in forming collaborative relationships across all suppliers and retailers, Kurz has been working closely with the worldwide food industry for the last two decades.
You can now buy tickets, both individual seats and tables, for the biggest event of the year in the logistics and supply chain sector. Click here to secure your place amongst the industry’s finest on 28 October at London’s biggest ballroom – Grosvenor House.
For more information on sponsorship opportunities at the Supply Chain Excellence Awards, contact andriana.christodoulou@akabomedia.co.uk.
