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Brent Esler, CEO
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CRT Awards Functions
For each of the last four years CRT has held an awards function to recognise the achievements of our team and our key suppliers. For the last two years these have been followed by a series of regional round-ups. These have proven very useful in recognising the efforts of all of our staff throughout the organisation, and for informing them of pending developments.
Awards for health and safety were presented regionally and our Blenheim branch took the overall win. Congratulations to the team there.
In overall store performance, recognising profit contribution as a percentage of sales, our Dunedin FarmCentre were this year’s winners, followed by Gore and Alexandra. We also recognised our top suppliers with Gallagher, Bayer Animal Health and Hansen Products taking out the retail awards. In our Card suppliers, Meridian Energy took first place, with Gordon Handy Machinery of South Canterbury second and Noel Leeming third. For the fourth consecutive year, Chevron New Zealand took out the award for overall business development with CRT.
This overall business development award is reflective of the changing nature of CRT’s business. Our business has now evolved into three major streams – card, fuel and oil, and farm supplies. In recent years the largest growth opportunities have arisen in the fuel and oil industry and we are very fortunate that we have been able to seize these. Other parts of our business have enjoyed strong and steady growth, but the recent developments in the fuel market have provided extraordinary opportunities for us. Despite the significance and contribution of this fuel business, the farm supplies market is still the very core of our focus and considerable development is occurring in the various divisions that contribute to that segment.
Another change in CRT’s business over the last decade, which was commented on by a number of suppliers at our awards presentation, was the gender balance within CRT, with many of the FarmCentre award winning managers being women. From 15 years ago when there were virtually no women employed in our retail stores – we now have 15 of the 31 stores managed by women, and a very good balance in the store staff . Five of our district managers are also women – and of course Judy Bevin is our long serving chief financial officer. I think it is particularly significant that unlike some large organisations that needed policy to achieve this balance, we have achieved this based solely on the aptitude of the staff involved.