TET: What are GC's current business execution strategies? What is the rationale behind the expansion towards the downstream industry?

GC's strategies are based on 3 major strategies. The first is "Step Change", emphasizing on strengthening our home base by gearing more towards the downstream businesses to enhance the competitiveness and flexibility, being able to capitalize on diverse feedstock, while at the same time ensuring that our costs are globally competitive, with the notion of horizontal and vertical integration applied to the business.

The horizontal and vertical concepts involve our production lines from upstream all the way to downstream businesses, which can be further developed into different types of chemical products, and can serve as fundamental feedstock for various industries such as packaging, garments, communication and electronics devices, automotive, construction, engineering plastic, and agricultural equipment. This also serves to diversify business risks, expand product offerings, and add values to them.

The next strategy "Step Out" capitalizes on GC's being the largest petrochemical operator in Southeast Asia, with 12 production sites across the globe. Our purpose is to build a genuinely global business. We have begun to invest in the USA more intensively. The Step Out strategy emphasizes on 2 components; merger and acquisition or M&A and the downstream business to secure global footprint, as well as investing in the petrochemical business; our core business, in Ohio, where polymer feedstock cost is very competitive.

The third strategy "Step Up" focuses on Sustainable Development, or SD; the matter that GC takes as an important part of the business, not just as CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) activities. In this regard, the Step Up strategy is multi-dimensional. In terms of scale, GC has expanded collaboration with our alliances both domestically and internationally in a larger scope, based on the concept of the circular economy to create awareness, from waste collection, management, sorting, transportation, and recycling, which is different from before when it was purely mechanical recycling, but now we are implementing chemical recycling, as part of the 'Step Up' initiative both in terms of scale and scope.

TET: Based upon the determination to operate the business in a sustainable manner, what are the tangible outcomes resulting from such endeavor?

GC has recently been ranked the first in the world in the Dow Jones Sustainability Indices: DJSI for the second consecutive year in the chemicals sector. We are also in the top 10 ranks of DJSI World and Emerging Markets for the eighth consecutive year, reflecting our determination in our ESG intent. This goes to show the Company's support and alignment with the global Sustainable Development Goals; SDGs that GC has been abiding by and actively executing for a long time.

Not only that, GC is the first and only Thai company that has been granted A level assessment (Leadership Level), which is the highest level in climate change and water security management, under the assessment of the globally trusted sustainability evaluation institute 'Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP)' in 2020.

Click here to continue