Meatco has won the prestigious SADC Exporter of the Year Award in the category for Large Enterprises at the 2014 Southern African Development Community (SADC) Annual Quality Awards.

This was the fourth time the SADC Annual Quality Awards were held.

Meatco Chief Executive Officer, Vekuii Rukoro, said this win is a great achievement for Meatco, especially considering this was the first time we entered the competition.

“I am very proud of our achievement,” he says.

The aim of the awards is to recognise and appreciate organisations and individuals who contribute to quality advancement in all sectors of SADC, by having measurement and quality systems as well as procedures and processes that are in line with local, regional and international practices, and that use quality advancement to support national and regional economic development and growth.

The awards were held at the SADC Secretariat in Gabarone, Botswana from 3 to 5 March, while the handover was done on 19 March 2014.

This win comes shortly after Meatco was placed first by the Namibian Standards Institute (NSI) as Namibian Exporter of the Year at the National Quality Awards held late last year. The National Quality Awards embraces quality and standards as tools for value addition to products and services. The winner in this category has made significant progress in commencing with or expanding exports to wider markets by introducing quality standards.

Meatco is a pioneer in quality standards compliance in Namibia and is one of the first companies to achieve certification for international standards like ISO 9001 and HACCP.

Meatco is an established and experienced exporter of high quality beef products and has been exporting to the European Union (EU), the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) and neighbouring South Africa for more than 25 years.

Since 2007, Meatco has focussed on changing our marketing strategy and market approach by developing further processed, value-added cuts to move up the value chain into the premium returning end-user consumer markets. Through these activities, Meatco has expanded into new countries with our Natures Reserve Namibian Beef brand. Some of the new markets developed over the last few years are Iran and Russia amongst others.

In the photo, Rosa Katjivena, Meatco’s Executive for Quality Assurance attended and accepted the Awards ceremony in Botswana on behalf of Meatco.