Rockstar of the Supply Chain: Sanjay Shrestha

In March, Food Logistics, the only publication exclusively dedicated to covering the movement of products through the global cold food supply chain, awarded Plug Power’s Chief Strategy Officer, Sanjay Shrestha, a winner of its 2021 Rock Stars of the Supply Chain award. The Food Logistics Rockstar of the Supply Chain award launched in 2015 and an individual from Plug Power has been named several years to the list for their effort in driving innovation within the industry.

Under Shrestha’s leadership, in June 2020, Plug Power closed the acquisitions of two companies involved in producing and transporting green hydrogen, United Hydrogen and Giner ELX, positioning Plug Power to transition to zero-carbon hydrogen solutions. These vertical integrations are in line with Plug Power’s green hydrogen business strategy, and in fact has allowed Plug Power to recently increase green hydrogen generation targets to 500 tons per day by 2025 and 1,000 tons per day before 2028. Working with partners, Plug Power has continued to make progress on moving multiple plants forward with expected completion of two green hydrogen generation plants by the end of 2022.

Food Logistics’ Assistant editor Mackenna Moralez and Sanjay Shrestha, Chief Strategy Officer, Plug Power sat down to do a video interview to discuss the importance of sustainability and the future of green supply chains. Here are a few excerpts.

On the importance of fuel cells in logistics

“We needed to keep running. If our system doesn’t work, the food on the table everybody was buying to stock up during the pandemic [wouldn’t get there]…we couldn’t afford that. During this pandemic, another point that became very clear was reinforcing the value proposition of the product we talk about. Productivity gain, uptime…our systems were operating at over 99% uptime, even while customers like Walmart were seeing, like peak demands, surges in demand driven by all the things we’ve been talking about.”

On consumer perspective

“This pandemic changed consumer behavior a bit. It brought a lot of attention to not just the benefit of what our product brings to the table,… but growing companies while making sure we’re taking care of people, taking care of the environment, taking care of the climate.”

On what’s next

“We are trying to take that one step further. We’re going from low carbon to zero carbon solutions, which is why we are looking to build a green hydrogen network, first of a kind, that is going to be a very resilient green hydrogen network in the U.S.”  

“We hear that same sustainability feedback from some of our largest customers. We’re trying to do what is right.”

Plug Power is very proud that the hard work we’re doing to build the green hydrogen economy has been recognized through Sanjay Shrestha’s Rock Stars of the Supply Chain award. 

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