The global business landscape has changed completely with emerging factors, namely climate change, digital disruption and constraints largely brought by the protracted Covid-19 pandemic. To stay alive and thrive, businesses across the world need to have clear strategies to address their ongoing concerns and better serve customers' demand in the new era.
For the petrochemical and plastic industry, the long-term concerns about how to recycle their products and tackle a large amount of plastic waste have never gone away. Recently, the issues of sustainability and digital transformation have become the new criteria for companies to meet in order to ensure business success in the changing environment.
At Dow Thailand, which celebrates its 55th anniversary this year, four key strategies have been laid down: innovation, being customer-centric, an inclusive culture and sustainable solutions. The unit of Dow Inc, the 125-year-old American materials science company, now focuses its portfolio on performance materials and coating; industrial intermediates and infrastructures; and packaging and specialty plastics.
Thailand is now the largest manufacturing hub in Asia-Pacific for Dow with 13 manufacturing plants. The US parent, with global sales revenue of about US$55 billion last year, currently operates 104 manufacturing sites in 31 countries and employs 35,700 people worldwide.
"Our ambition for Dow is to be the most innovative, customer-centric, diverse and sustainable material science company in the world. Those are our four main areas," says Chatchai Luanpolcharoenchai, president of Dow Thailand.
Innovation is the key growth engine for Dow, he said. Together with customers, the company developed materials and solutions with technology and support from the company's research and development (R&D) centres.
Overall, Dow has 12 R&D centres around the world and the biggest one in Asia-Pacific is in Shanghai with 600 researchers working at the centre.
To be customer-centric, Dow seeks to create breakthrough materials for applications that help customers succeed in the end markets they serve. He said the goal is to be easy, enjoyable and effective to do business with through all of the company's digital and personal interactions.
In terms of inclusivity, Dow champions a fully inclusive workplace. In return, diversity and inclusion help the company win the war for talent and be more resilient. "Everyone who comes to the office should be 100% themselves. We believe that everyone can contribute whether they are male, female or any gender," Mr Chatchai said.
Dow's belief in inclusivity starts with diversity in opinion and culture. "I believe in diversity of ideas. No matter you are a Westerner or Asian, people grow up in a different environment and they have a different opinion but respect for the diversity of ideas make things very different."
"When I first joined Dow in 1991, about 40% of our employees were expats. We had engineers of many nationalities including those from Australia, the Netherlands and the US during that time, but today we only have two expats," he said.
The change is explained by Dow's belief in developing local talent. "We have focused on talent development. People are the most important part of our success story here in Thailand. We have what we call a career development plan for our people."
"We believe in diversity and inclusion. Dow has more than 900 employees in Thailand and you will be amazed that almost 40% of our engineers are female. We also have 47% managers that are female," adds Mr Chatchai.
Dow Thailand has sent Thai staff to help operations in other countries. "For example, we have our people support the operations in Vietnam and at the same time we develop Vietnamese employees so that within the next couple of years they can take up the responsibility," he said.
As climate change and plastic waste are among the greatest technical, social and economic issues the world has ever faced, Dow Thailand has listed sustainability among its four key strategies. "Dow's products and technology are critical to addressing both. We are committed to innovating and promoting sustainable solutions that help solve these issues," said Mr Chatchai.
"Sustainability is an issue not only for the petrochemical industry but many businesses. If you don't work on it, the market will force you to do so," he said.
According to Mr Chatchai, Dow has three sustainability goals. Back in June 2020, the company accelerated its sustainability commitment by announcing new targets which were built upon Dow's 2025 Sustainability Goals.
The first goal is protecting the climate. Dow aims to reduce its net annual carbon emissions by five million tonnes by 2030, or 15% from a 2020 baseline. Additionally, Dow intends to be carbon neutral by 2050, explains Mr Chatchai.
"The company is committed to implementing and advancing technologies to manufacture products using fewer resources and that help customers reduce their carbon footprint," he said.
"In Thailand, Dow has many operational excellence projects in the pipeline to enhance our manufacturing efficiency, safety, and reliability while reducing our climate impact. Now we are ahead of the target as we have reduced it by more than 4.2% as of now, compared to 2020," he said.
The second goal is to "stop the waste" by 2030. To achieve this target, one million tonnes of plastic are set to be collected, reused or recycled through Dow's direct actions and partnerships.
Plastic waste is the main issue in Thailand and many countries, said Mr Chatchai.
"We firmly believe that plastic waste is more valuable than just being dumped in the landfill or ending up in nature as plastic waste. In fact, plastic itself is very functional, very applicable for many products," he said.
Dow has technology and innovation in tackling plastic waste.
"But to get to that point, we need regulatory support from the government, infrastructure and social understanding. Lacking any of these makes the implementation quite challenging," said Mr Chatchai.
"We are working alongside our value chain partners, customers, government bodies and associations in Thailand to shift towards plastics for the circular economy -- whereby from design to disposal, the value of plastic is retained, while the burdens placed on the environment are eliminated," he said.
"We are also innovating new and important applications for waste plastics, such as construction materials and roads."
Last but not least, the third goal is closing the loop. "Dow is committed to redesigning and offering reusable or recyclable solutions for packaging applications," Mr Chatchai says, adding that by 2035 Dow will have 100% of its products sold into packaging applications be reusable or recyclable.
For example, the company has worked with a local partner on a multi-layer, mono-material solution which makes rice bags thinner but stronger and easy to recycle. Besides, the company is collaborating with leading brands in Thailand to make refill bags recyclable with typical recycling facilities in Thailand.
As Thailand's Covid-19 restrictions have been eased, Dow Thailand has resumed 100% working from the office but provides flexibility for employees to work from home, Mr Chatchai said.
"We asked people to come back to the sites, at the same time we implemented what we called DYD [design your day]. People have got used to working from home and some of them can be more efficient working from home."
In the DYD initiative, 4-5 flexibilities are provided to staff. For example, Flex Time is offered for those who need time to send their children to school and want to start and finish work later than others.
Flex Day, meanwhile, is for someone who has a particular issue such as a family member having to go to the hospital; you can work from home on those days and take care of the family while working.
Besides, starting from Aug 1, the company has launched an experimental phase of having one day per week for staff to work from home.
"We want to ensure hybrid working efficiency and at the same time provide flexibility for our people. We agree that it is our shared responsibility. If it works out well, we can further adjust our hybrid working programme," he said.
