OREANDA-NEWS. October 03, 2016. Stephen Saad, Aspen Group Chief Executive, was announced as the winner of the Entrepreneur of the Year Award at the All Africa Business Leaders Awards (AABLA) gala banquet in Johannesburg.

At the Awards, hosted in partnership with CNBC Africa, Stephen Saad said, “You work at something and you build something together with the team and seldom have time to look back. To be recognized for it in this way is wonderful and particularly so for Aspen. We are a company with roots in South Africa and manufacturing in South Africa. We’ve grown our local talent to become a world player and Aspen is just a wonderful South African story.”

Saad said that the biggest challenges faced, besides business basics, was breaking into a generics market and making really big investments around quality and investment.

“Aspen competes with multinationals – we started a domestic company and have gone offshore to become a global company manufacturing in South Africa for domestic and export markets,” added Mr Saad.

“Going forward we will continue to look for strategic partners. We have completed a number of significant transactions and Aspen has built a really strong foundation now. Our aspiration in the short term is to build on that base and to double our size.”

The AABLA, Africa’s most respected business awards, honours remarkable leadership and salutes game changers of business on the continent for their continuing commitment to excellence, developing best practices and innovative strategies.