Hayleys Plantations PLC has been recognized among Sri Lanka’s most awarded corporate entities for 2025, according to the latest rankings published by LMD, with its plantation companies achieving exceptional positions in the national standings.
Leading the rankings, Talawakelle Tea Estates PLC (TTE PLC) secured the No. 1 position as Sri Lanka’s most awarded company. Kelani Valley Plantations PLC (KVPL) ranked third overall, while Horana Plantations PLC (HPL) secured the 15th position in the national rankings. Notably, all three companies occupied the top three positions within the Plantation Sector, marking a rare and significant achievement for a single plantation group in Sri Lanka.
The recognition reflects Hayleys Plantations’ sustained excellence across a wide range of operational, environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance indicators. As one of Sri Lanka’s largest plantation sector operators, the Group continues to champion sustainable agriculture, responsible production practices, and long-term value creation.
Over the years, Hayleys Plantations has strengthened its position through continuous improvements in sustainability performance, enhanced transparency, workforce empowerment, and community development initiatives across its estates. The Group remains focused on balancing environmental stewardship, social progress, and economic growth while enhancing its competitiveness in global markets.
Commenting on the achievement, Managing Director Dr. Roshan Rajadurai stated:
"2025 marks a defining year of performance and recognition for Hayleys Plantations, demonstrating sustained excellence across all our estates. Our success is rooted in a long-term commitment to sustainability, ethical business practices, and inclusive growth. From our estate workers to our leadership teams, every individual has contributed significantly to this achievement. Being recognized among Sri Lanka’s most awarded corporate groups reflects the discipline, resilience, and consistency that define our organization. We sincerely thank all our employees for their unwavering dedication and commitment."
He further noted that this recognition reinforces the Group’s responsibility to continue raising industry benchmarks while delivering value to stakeholders, communities, and the national economy.
The achievement, reflecting performance during the 2025/26 financial year, highlights the Group’s consistent excellence across key sustainability dimensions, including environmental management, product quality, human capital development, and social responsibility.
Looking ahead, Hayleys Plantations plans to further strengthen its sustainability agenda, drive innovation across plantation operations, and build resilience in an increasingly dynamic global marketplace. The Group remains committed to maintaining its leadership position within Sri Lanka’s plantation sector while creating long-term value for all stakeholders.
Sysco Earns Newsweek’s 2026 AI Impact Award for Brand and Retail Excellence
Sysco Corporation, the global leader in food distribution, has been honored with the 2026 Newsweek AI Impact Award for its enterprise-wide artificial intelligence initiative that is transforming supply chain operations, boosting sales productivity, and enhancing the digital customer experience.
The company received the recognition in the AI Brand & Retail – Best Outcomes category for developing and scaling its Sysco Agentic Ecosystem (SAGE). This AI-driven platform is designed to move artificial intelligence beyond pilot projects and embed it directly into day-to-day business operations across sales, supply chain management, customer engagement, and back-office functions.
According to Sysco Interim Chief Information and Digital Officer Navin Advani, SAGE represents a significant step forward in responsibly operationalizing AI within a large global enterprise. He noted that integrating AI into core workflows—from sales support and customer interactions to inventory planning and logistics—has enabled Sysco to evolve AI from a set of tools into a long-term operational capability.
Newsweek Recognition
The Newsweek AI Impact Awards celebrate organizations that demonstrate real, measurable outcomes from artificial intelligence, highlighting innovations that go beyond experimentation to deliver sustained business value and operational impact.
This award highlights Sysco’s leadership in applying AI to solve complex challenges in retail distribution and global supply chain management, setting a benchmark for how agentic AI can be implemented at scale across industries.
Thushera Kawdawatta, Managing Director of Sysco LABS Sri Lanka, also emphasized the achievement, noting that the award marks a major milestone for the broader Sysco ecosystem. He credited the engineering teams in Sri Lanka for playing a key role in building SAGE and highlighted how these enterprise-grade AI capabilities are enabling employees to focus on higher-value, more impactful work.
He added that the recognition—alongside recent wins at the Presidential Export Awards and SLASSCOM National Ingenuity Awards—demonstrates how innovation developed in Colombo is contributing to Sysco’s global transformation.
Impact of SAGE Across Operations
SAGE enables teams across the organization to automate workflows, access insights more quickly, and improve decision-making through AI systems supported by human oversight. Key applications include:
E-commerce and sales enablement: delivering more personalized digital experiences, improving product discovery via Sysco Shop, and guiding sales teams with Next Best Action recommendations
Supply chain optimization: improving forecasting accuracy, inventory management, product flow, and service reliability
Predictive analytics and forecasting: using real-time data signals to help teams respond proactively to demand shifts and operational changes
Since its rollout, SAGE has rapidly moved from pilot programs into full production use, powering multiple live AI applications and supporting millions of enterprise interactions across Sysco’s global operations.
Scalable, Secure AI Architecture
SAGE serves as a unified intelligence layer that connects external AI models with Sysco’s internal systems and data, enabling AI-powered workflows across the enterprise. Unlike traditional platforms, it is model-agnostic and cloud-flexible, allowing Sysco to adopt emerging AI technologies while maintaining strong security, compliance, and human-in-the-loop governance.
By standardizing how AI agents are developed, governed, and deployed, SAGE allows Sysco to scale solutions more quickly and accelerate time-to-value across its global business operations.
Hayleys Plantations Earns Prestigious Recognition as One of Sri Lanka’s Most Awarded Corporate Groups in 2025
