The Sustainable Business Leadership Award will recognise a person who has created visionary technologies that can sustainably enhance human experience and capabilities.

Hickmann said he was sponsoring the award because “naturally the whole sustainability piece resonates well” with his business.

“We produce high-performance lighting that’s energy-efficient as well as progressing our company to reach a carbon neutral status, so sustainability in everything we do as a team,” he said.

“It’s how our office operates as well as how we source and manufacture components for our products. Sustainability is really important to us.”

Hickmann is looking for someone who has overcome sustainability challenges while aligning themselves to reduce their carbon footprint.

InDaily’s 40 Under 40 Awards celebrate the impact South Australia’s finest young business people have on shaping the future of our state.

The awards celebrate individuals for their personal and commercial determination but also their philanthropic pursuits.

Last year Hickmann was awarded the William Buck Entrepreneurial Award for the development of his LED lighting system company.

The award recognises an outstanding lateral business thinker and risk taker exhibiting entrepreneurial flair.

Hickmann said the award has helped propel his business forward.

“It brought us the credibility and exposure for what it is we’ve been building over many years and that’s bringing advance manufacturing for the lighting centre back to South Australia,” Hickmann said.

“Being recognised for such an outstanding award gave us that strength and credibility, it’s really helped us over the last 12 months to elevate the business.”

“It was extremely positive from a PR perspective and assisted with a lot of people who think we can’t manufacture to the scale we are trying to here in Adelaide because a majority of manufacturing’s moved offshore.”

VALO is a sustainably advanced technology business with its core in high-performance LED lighting.

Hickmann said VALO’s high-performance LED lighting was lighter-weight, longer-lasting and more sustainability conscious than the competition.

“We look at everything with a 20-year plus outlook,” he said.

“Everything that we do manufacture can be recycled or reclaimed so that the resource is reused in the future.”

The lights have been used in buildings as large as the Titanium Security Arena as well as at the winter festival Illuminate Adelaide.

Last year VALO invested in a multi-million-dollar facility and redevelopment in Kent Town with surface mounting technology production line, semi-autonomous production robotics.

“We see our team tripling in size over the coming 12 months, we’re moving from a thousand square-metre facility to a 3.5 thousand square-metre facility in the latter half of this year,” Hickmann said.

“With InDaily’s 40 under 40 we are getting that recognition to hopefully grow 50 to 100 per cent year on year over the next three to five year forecast.”

Nominations for InDaily’s 40 Under 40 Awards close this week on Friday, April 1. The awards will be presented at a gala event on Thursday, 9 June at the Adelaide Oval.

Nominate and apply here.