Malaysian Rubber Council (MRC) was selected as the winner of the prestigious Asia Pacific Enterprise Awards (APEA) 2022 under the Professional and Business Services Industry for the Corporate Excellence and Inspirational Brand award categories.
Asia Pacific Enterprise Awards (APEA) is a Regional Awards Recognition program recognising entrepreneurial and corporate excellence, aimed to band leading entrepreneurs and organisations across Asia to spur greater innovation, fair practices, and growth in entrepreneurship, creating a successful entrepreneurial ecosystem that will then shape Asia to sustainable economic and social growth.
“MRC as an agency under the Ministry of Plantation Industries and Commodities (MPIC) has always been focused on holistic sustainability in line with the mission and objectives of the Ministry as well as the rubber industry, in positioning Malaysia as a competitive agricommodity leader with high value and sustainable agricultural products in the global market,” said Nor Hizwan Ahmad, CEO of MRC.
Corporate Excellence is awarded to organisations that have demonstrated effective talent mobilization and organisational capability to deliver consistent business results; while remaining aligned to the organisation’s purpose. Meanwhile, Inspirational Brand is awarded to transformational brands that are both inspired and inspiring, seeking to promote goodness, wellness and sustainability in which they are the ‘heroes’ within the brand universe.
“I am delighted to learn that MRC has been awarded both categories and became among the organisations that were honoured for outstanding performance and tenacity in developing successful businesses, whilst not neglecting the social responsibilities that come with leadership,” added Nor Hizwan.
Since its establishment in 2021, MRC’s Sustainability Division was tasked to drive and advocate sustainability practices in the industry through various programmes and initiatives that not only focussing on COVID-19 assistance and helping the community to survive the pandemic safely, but also on balancing the sustainability impacts amongst all sectors, from upstream to downstream that led to a paradigm shift in the economy that challenged business progress and value creation.
Under the Sustainability Division, MRC’s CSR initiatives were targeted not only to the Community and the Smallholders but to the Industry Players too, by focusing at gaps, issues, and challenges across Economic, Environmental, Social, and Governance (EESG) considerations in the rubber industry.
Among the programmes organised in providing assistance for the underprivileged Community and families under the B40 category are Bantuan Prihatin MRC, E Learning Programme, Back To School Programme, Circular Economic Programme, MeRCu Programme and Women Empowerment Programme, to name a few.
MRC has also organised various programmes to encourage social compliance for capacity building, namely technical and soft skill trainings such as SMETA Virtual Training, SA8000 Training and latest, the GHG Emissions Training. By encouraging the rubber industry players to hire more locals and subsequently reduce the dependency towards foreign workers, MRC has also recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Social Security Organisation (SOCSO) to ensure more Smallholders are insured with SOCSO and more Malaysians will engage with the rubber industry.
“As social compliance is also integral for MRC, we will keep working together with industry players and internal stakeholders towards the path of achieving industry best practices,” Nor Hizwan also added.
APEA 2022 received 124 submissions with 63 winners being selected for four award categories namely, Entrepreneur of the Year, Master Entrepreneur, Corporate Excellence and Inspirational Brand which consist of 46 companies and 17 entrepreneurs.
