The value drivers Strategy, Productivity & Innovation, Corporate Culture, and Governance & Finance form the evaluation framework for determining whether a company qualifies as a Best Managed Company. This year, the expert panel once again identified and intensively analyzed PROBAT's strengths, potential, and challenges in these key areas of corporate governance. Top-class committees from business, science, and the media accompanied the multi-stage coaching and selection process. In the end, the panel of experts nominated PROBAT as a finalist before the award jury once again named the global market leader from the Lower Rhine as a Best Managed Company.

By clearly focusing on solutions for current challenges, PROBAT has impressively demonstrated how resulting opportunities can be strategically exploited. In doing so, the company has not only withstood the pressure of these extraordinary times but has also shown that crises can also mean new beginnings. Markus Seiz, Best Managed Company Program Leader and Director at Deloitte Private on the awarding to PROBAT: "As a winner of the Best Managed Companies Award, PROBAT has once again successfully demonstrated its outstanding corporate management. PROBAT is thus not only a benchmark for German SMEs, but at the same time stands for a strong as well as thoughtful management in dynamic times."

An even stronger focus on the current industry drivers of sustainability and digitalization played a key role in PROBAT once again being awarded with the honor for outstanding companies in the SME sector. Here, the roasting machine manufacturer consistently sets new standards within the industry with the development of new environmental technologies for the sustainable design of coffee processing as well as with digital marketing platforms. At the same time, this contributes to the megatrends defined by the Best Managed Companies Council: "Purpose", "Digitalization" and "ESG".

The Best Managed Companies Award is intended to inspire and serve as a model for other companies to shape the future with an equally strategic vision, value-creating efficiency, innovative strength, and a sustainable management culture based on value-driven action. A key unique selling point of the Best Managed Companies Award is its internationality, which recognizes the strong global orientation of SMEs. Many SMEs have long been pursuing a successful internationalization strategy and are continuing their expansion course. "Strategic foresight and responsible action are core qualities of a Best Managed Company, like PROBAT. These qualities are prerequisites of a strong economy. To promote them, the award winners have access to a global ecosystem of excellently managed medium-sized companies from now more than 40 countries," emphasizes Lutz Meyer, Partner at Deloitte Private.