Press Releases

10/30/2018

AVANGRID and Iberdrola Honor Northline Utilities of Au Sable Forks for Service Quality and Reliability

AVANGRID and Iberdrola Honor Northline Utilities of Au Sable Forks for Service Quality and Reliability

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

 

ORANGE, Connecticut — October 30, 2018 — An Au Sable Forks, N.Y. utility services company was among 12 businesses from eight countries recognized by AVANGRID, Inc. (NYSE: AGR) and the Iberdrola Group at its 2018 Global Supplier of the Year Awards.

Northline Utilities, LLC, which performs line construction work and other services for AVANGRID’s electric companies in New York and New England, was honored with Iberdrola’s Service Quality and Response Award. AVANGRID’s subsidiaries include New York State Electric and Gas, Rochester Gas & Electric, and United Illuminating in Connecticut, which engage Northline Utilities during storms and ‘blue-sky’ operations. AVANGRID, in turn, is the U.S. affiliate of Iberdrola, one of the world’s five top utilities.

“As a ‘Utility of the Future’, Iberdrola and its global affiliates rely on partners throughout the supply chain to uphold our commitment to reliability and high-quality service,” said Iberdrola Group Chairman Ignacio Galán. “This award recognizes Northline Utilities’ quick, flexible and efficient response — particularly in resolving incidents caused by storms.”

Galán announced the award recipients at Iberdrola’s Global Supplier of the Year Awards event, held on Tuesday in San Agustín del Guadalix, Spain. It was attended by around 340 guests, including representatives of 167 of the company's suppliers from various countries and business sectors. The event seeks promote and acknowledge the work of Iberdrola’s suppliers in Europe and the Americas.

Galán underlined that “together with our suppliers we are addressing the important challenges posed by the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Companies – large and small – are making a key contribution to the realisation of the new agenda”

Iberdrola and its companies have a significant economic impact on the areas where they do business. Galán said Iberdrola expects to close the year with an allocated purchasing volume of more than 9 billion euros (about $10.2 billion), 5 percent more than during the previous year, supporting approximately 400,000 jobs. U.S. spending for 2018 is expected to total 2.67 billion euros (about $3 billion) for a total of 5,280 suppliers.

2018 Award Recipients

The 2018 Global Supplier of the Year Awards are divided into 12 categories: Supplier of the Year; Equipment; Service Quality and Response; Energy Services; Non-energy Services; Environment; CSR; Competitiveness and Innovation; Diversity and Equality; Occupational Health and Safety; Construction Services and Internationalization.

The Supplier of the Year award went to the Brazilian manufacturer WEG, which has become the Group's main supplier of transformers and has production centers in three countries that are especially important for Iberdrola, Brazil, Mexico and the United States, in which it contributes to generating local employment — more than 29,000 workers.

In the Equipment section the winner was the company Schneider Electric (France), a historic Iberdrola supplier that has always stood out for its service quality and response and who has been rewarded for its support in the deployment of smart grids in Spain.

The Spanish company Integral Management Future, with headquarters in Galicia, won the award in the Energy Services category for the highly efficient operating and maintenance work it provides to Iberdrola's renewable energies business in Europe. The Non-energy Services went to the Dutch company SHL, which did impeccable work during the transport and assembly phases of the East Anglia One marine wind farm's offshore substation, a project of unprecedented scale in the renewables sector worldwide.

The prize in the Environment category was won by Aecom (United Kingdom) for its impact assessment concerning the electricity grid activities, carried out along with ScottishPower and Scottish Wildlife Trust. The Mexican company Fonabec A.C., which collaborates in the Iberdrola Involve corporate volunteering project, received the award in the CSR section for its support, since the year 2000, to more than 13,000 underprivileged young people in Mexico to ensure they can continue with their secondary and higher education.

The award winner in the Competitiveness and Innovation category was Innova-TSN (Spain), in acknowledgement of its commitment to technological development as one of its main development areas, embodied in the innovative development of the Customer Intelligence Platform tool.

The Diversity and Equality award acknowledged the work of the Brazilian company ITB Equipamentos Eletricos, which, apart from obtaining a high score in the CSR Scoring in Brazil, has been demonstrating its firm commitment to equality, diversity and women's rights, also carrying out actions with university students and groups at risk of exclusion.

Brown & Mason (United Kingdom) won the award in the Occupational Health and Safety category for its excellent occupational safety record during the Longannet demolition works, the thermal powerstation at which it spent over 200,000 hours carrying out waste removal. The closure of this coal-fired plant, which used to be the biggest in Europe, came in the context of Iberdrola's firm commitment to decarbonizing the economy.

The Construction Services award went to the Portuguese company Socorpena, for its promotion of local employment in the works carried out at the Támega river hydroelectric complex, and, finally, the award for Internationalization was collected by the Guipuzcoa company Ibermática, for its long career supporting Iberdrola in information technology and corporate system deployment projects and works internationally.

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