In 2021, Procurement Leaders – a community that provides strategy development and peer-to-peer benchmarking for Chief Procurement Officers – decided to replace their World Procurement Awards with a one-off celebration: Extraordinary Stories. These stories, from organizations across the globe recognize how procurement has stepped up in times of strain to support business performance, protect local communities and save lives during the pandemic.

Luís Portela, Procurement Director at Hovione, was invited to tell Hovione’s extraordinary story through this period. In a short video he explains how we produced and supplied for free, sanitizing agents at a time where this was scarcely available and speculation drove prohibitive prices.

We adapted sectors of our industrial facilities to produce sanitizing agent and made it available for free to our Team Members at work and at home, as well as to healthcare and social supporting institutions. This was only possible with a team effort while we continued to produce medicines that save lives without disruptions.

Watch the video at Procurement Leaders.com

Learn more about our efforts in the article "Stepping up to the hand sanitizer shortage" by C&EN.