Organized by SME, the Asia Pacific Entrepreneurship Award 2008 (APEA), identifies Northport as an organization that places high priority on people development and welfare as Northport won the APEA 2008, under the Investment in People Award category.

The Asia Pacific Entrepreneurship Awards is a regional recognition awards organized by Enterprise Asia to honor entrepreneurs that have demonstrated not just outstanding entrepreneurship achievements, but also responsible entrepreneurship and investment in people.

According to Northport’s Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer Dato' Basheer Hassan Abdul Kader, winning this award is a true depiction of Northport’s corporate culture, which emphasizes on people centric culture and values.

“Northport invests millions in the employee development programs. This is to ensure that our employees are equipped with state-of-the-art technology, knowledge and skills to perform better. Besides our in-house programs, we also send them for refresher courses outside and even overseas,” he said.

“We place equal importance on all our employees here so they are able to progress. Through the employee development programs, we want to give opportunities to executives to equip themselves with knowledge to attain managerial positions and for non-executives to become executives. Our phenomenal growth in the last 10 years is all made possible by our knowledgeable workforce. Our continuous learning programs are in fruition now. This has quadrupled our productivity and overall revenue of our port,” added Dato’ Basheer.

“It’s simple really, at Northport, the people come first. By having so many benefits, the employees here are happy to stay and to strive to achieve the best that they can. Our employee turnover rate is the testimony of our success,” he said.

“We are a big family where the management and our employees enjoy a wonderful working relationship. Our unions have also contributed immensely to the success of Northport,” he continued.

It should also be noted that Northport, which boasts a workforce of approximately 2500 employees, sets exemplary standards by rewarding employees generously based on productivity and efficiency gains.