The 9th Rexam Supplier Award Ceremony was held in St. Albans, UK on March 8, 2012. Once a year Rexam, a global consumer packaging group and European beverage can maker, awards its suppliers in five categories—Supply, Quality, Cost, “Rexam Way” and Supplier of the Year.

AkzoNobel's Packaging Coatings unit was awarded with the Supplier Excellence Award for Supply. AkzoNobel was the only coatings company receiving a prize this year.

“With the award Rexam honored the extraordinary job that AkzoNobel has accomplished in 2011 with the inside spray conversion in our European and Asian plants," " said Diane Bryden, supplier relationship manager at Rexam. "That was a huge challenge for both our organizations—AkzoNobel and Rexam. Due to the change of our supplier we had to convert 13 plants with a total of 36 production lines to AkzoNobel, and that in only five months."

“The time frame was very ambitious and to succeed we had to develop and agree on a robust and open process, track the progress with solid methodology and deploy sufficient capable resources to make that conversion happen," said Christophe Perin, key account manager at AkzoNobel Packaging Coatings.

A team of more than 20 technical experts has been travelling around Europe and Asia during the conversion exercise. On top of the conversion process, AkzoNobel was assigned to increase the
capacity at the Birmingham plant to validate a robust contingency plan.