MON­TEGO BAY, Ja­maica–Sacha Cos­met­ics, a well-known beau­ty brand found­ed in 1979 in T&T is the win­ner of the in­au­gur­al Caribbean Ex­porter of the Year Awards.

The fam­i­ly-owned busi­ness claimed the top ac­co­lade from a field nine nom­i­nees drawn from across the re­gion as the cur­tains came down on the 3rd Car­i­fo­rum-EU Busi­ness Fo­rum held in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the ACP Busi­ness Cli­mate fa­cil­i­ty (Biz­Clim) at the Hilton Rose Hall Beach & Spa Re­sort.

Sacha Cos­met­ics is cur­rent­ly dis­trib­uted in 23 coun­tries and sold on­line in North Amer­i­ca. The com­pa­ny start­ed with a vi­sion, "to de­vel­op a cos­mopoli­tan brand of cos­met­ics which would look equal­ly ex­quis­ite on all skin tones", ac­cord­ing to founder and man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Ka­ma Ma­haraj.

In 2013 the com­pa­ny was ap­point­ed sole sup­pli­er of cos­met­ics to the largest dis­tri­b­u­tion com­pa­ny in Cu­ba with 2,179 re­tail out­lets. Its prod­ucts have been used by nu­mer­ous make­up artists at ma­jor in­ter­na­tion­al beau­ty events and among oth­er achieve­ments, Sacha was the of­fi­cial cos­met­ics for the 1999 Miss Uni­verse con­test, the 2000 Miss USA Pageant, the 2011 Miss Ba­hamas Pageant and the 2014 Miss Pana­ma Pageant.

Thank­ing Caribbean Ex­port for recog­ni­tion, Ma­haraj said: "Sacha's phi­los­o­phy is that a woman's make up must en­hance her nat­ur­al beau­ty, not hide it. Over the years we have com­mit­ted our­selves to build­ing a pow­er­ful brand."

He added" "We don't make cos­met­ics, we make women look more beau­ti­ful...In fact, we do not sell cos­met­ics, we sell hope."

The award seeks to recog­nise the firm which has achieved sig­nif­i­cant ex­port­ing suc­cess and whose brand epit­o­mis­es Caribbean Ex­port's phi­los­o­phy of "Tak­ing Caribbean Ex­cel­lence to the World."

Com­men­da­tions to Sacha came from pres­i­dent of the Pri­vate Sec­tor Or­gan­i­sa­tion of Ja­maica, William Mah­food, guest speak­er at the awards cer­e­mo­ny, and from Caribbean Ex­port's ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor, Pamela Coke Hamil­ton.

"We deemed it ab­solute­ly nec­es­sary to give due re­spect to our re­gion's ex­porters, com­pa­nies that have played a sig­nif­i­cant role in strength­en­ing our economies and gen­er­at­ing for­eign ex­change," said Coke-Hamil­ton.

She not­ed that many of the com­pa­nies had gen­er­at­ed em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties and helped in­flu­ence a strong favourable per­cep­tion of the Caribbean brand re­gion­al­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly.

Mah­food said man­u­fac­tur­ing and ex­port­ing in the Caribbean was a dai­ly chal­lenge "so I take my hat off to you and I con­grat­u­late you for all that you do."

Awards were pre­sent­ed in six oth­er cat­e­gories.

The Young Ex­porter of the Year was award­ed to a com­pa­ny, whose prin­ci­pal share­hold­er is no old­er than 35 years, and was copped by T&T sleep sys­tems man­u­fac­tur­er Ad­vanced Foam Ltd, win­ning from a field of eight nom­i­nees.

The Green Ex­porter of the Year Award, which recog­nis­es an ex­porter that has in­vest­ed in green tech­nolo­gies and in­te­grat­ed al­ter­na­tive en­er­gy so­lu­tion in­to its op­er­a­tion lead­ing to ex­port suc­cess, went to Nand Per­saud and Com­pa­ny Ltd, a rice milling com­plex in Guyana whose prod­ucts are on gro­cery shelves world­wide. From pro­duc­ing one ton of rice per hour in 1992, the com­pa­ny now has the ca­pa­bil­i­ty of pro­duc­ing up to six tons of par­boiled rice and eight tons of white rice per hour. The com­pa­ny re­cy­cles all of its rice shell to pow­er all its ma­chines, in­clud­ing pad­dy dry­ers, and is look­ing to ex­pand pro­duc­tion ca­pac­i­ty by ten per­cent next year.

Gopex In­ter­na­tion­al of Suri­name emerged the vic­tor from a field of ten nom­i­nees for the Emerg­ing Ex­porter of the Year award which recog­nis­es a new ex­port busi­ness that has en­tered the ex­port mar­ket over the last three years, and which is ex­pe­ri­enc­ing sig­nif­i­cant suc­cess.

The Caribbean Ex­port Choice Award was giv­en to the ex­porter, which ex­em­pli­fies great dri­ve and de­ter­mi­na­tion to ex­port prod­ucts and ser­vices glob­al­ly was claimed by SMAKS Lux­u­ry Group of T&T, pro­duc­ers of the world's first tea-in­fused Chai rum.

The Spe­cial Award for Ex­cel­lence in Ser­vice Ex­port recog­nis­es an out­stand­ing Caribbean firm whose pri­ma­ry area of busi­ness is the pro­vi­sion of ser­vices with glob­al reach was won by, Ge­oT­ech Vi­sion from Ja­maica.

Ja­maican agro-proces­sor De­nese Palmer of South­side Dis­trib­u­tors of Ja­maica was ad­judged Fe­male Ex­porter of the Year.