Paragon Trading Asia CEO honoured at HKB Management Excellence Awards

The company has shown managerial excellence and a strategic innovation and leadership despite the challenges brought by the pandemic.

Christopher Liang, CEO of wines and spirits producer and distributor Paragon Trading Asia, was recognised as the recipient of the Executive of the Year - Food & Beverage at the coveted HKB Management Excellence Awards for his successful leadership of the company towards an excellent product management.

Under his leadership, Paragon forged Class A partnerships with production facilities to give them the flexibility in inventory management and preferential supply chain support that was necessary particularly during the systematic industrial downturns caused by the pandemic.

The company also displayed robust project management skills by retaining a team of multi-role high performers that could navigate the administrative workload to keep the organisation as a top performing beverage business in a highly competitive marketplace such as Hong Kong.

Liang observed that Asia Pacific is a rising economic region with around 500 million active consumers of alcoholic beverages in total. This also includes emerging markets that exhibit strong demand for wine whilst also struggling with a consistent shortage of domestic supply.

“Now that restrictions have relaxed and travel has resumed, we are aiming to expand our operations… Longer term, we intend to increase focus further afield in the next two or three years,” he said.

Despite the company being relatively young, the company had become leaner and more resilient to face upcoming challenges in the future. Liang noted that in overcoming challenges for their brand’s weaker categories, Paragon will utilise strategic partnership and public relations efforts to engage more prospective clients.

He added that the company is targeting to reach organic sales and distribution growth of at least 10% YoY.

“Our exit strategy would be to enter a joint venture with other industry stalwarts when our status within beverages matures in due course,” Liang said.

HKB Management Excellence Awards honours the region’s most outstanding leaders, innovators and teams whose initiatives have made substantial contributions to the growth and success of their companies and of Hong Kong.

The HKB Management Excellence Awards is presented by Hong Kong Business Magazine. To view the full list of winners, click here. If you want to join the 2025 awards programme and be acclaimed for your company's employee engagements and management initiatives, please contact Danica Avila at [email protected].