Expanding overseas and increasing supply agility

There is a plant of polymer additives at a corner of the Rojana Industrial Park in the Thailand Province of Chon Buri. Built by China, this plant is able to produce 25,000 tons of rubber antioxidants a year. It fills a gap of rubber antioxidant production in Southeast Asian countries, and also provides local services for the production facilities of downstream customers throughout the region.

This is a plant of Sennics, a member company of Sinochem International Corporation. It was put into operation on May 19, 2021.

Sinochem's first overseas plant for polymer additives

In 2019, Sennics announced a Glocal (Global Production, Local Service) strategy to accelerate its global expansion and meet the diverse needs of overseas customers. The Thailand plant was built as a key move under the company's Glocal strategy.

The industrial park where Sennics' polymer additives plant is located is home to a number of leading global auto makers and tire makers. Taking advantage of Thailand's geographic location, Sennics can reach the entire region and even the entire world, to increase the stability of the global supply of polymer additives, to cement its global leadership in the industry, and to become a trusted all-weather GLOCAL partner for customers.

The plant was built through the close collaboration between Sennics' domestic team and its field team in Thailand. Paying attention to every detail, the teams worked together to put into place a compliance framework meeting the requirements for cross-border construction, production and management. When the project was approaching key milestones, the company's employees from various positions including production, warehousing, transportation and intelligent manufacturing came from China in different cohorts to help build the plant in Thailand and make sure it would become a high-quality manufacturing facility.

An intelligent, green and sustainable world-class plant

In the central control room of the Thailand plant, all the production parameters would be displayed on the monitors. There are HD surveillance cameras throughout the plant. An operator in the central control room can retrieve images from a camera at any time. By zooming in an image, he or she would be able to see the parameters of a pressure meter on a piece of equipment. There are only a small number of field operators in the production area, who would patrol the area at regular intervals. The entire production process is basically automated and intelligent.

In addition, drawing on the best practices of Sennics plants in China, the Thailand plant was built into a modern facility featuring efficient, green, low-carbon and circular development. Adopting a globally leading green production process, the plant is advanced in terms of product quality, resource utilization, production safety, and emission control.

Guided by the "Smart Sennics" strategy, this intelligent, green and sustainable plant has built an integrated operation system, using an information system to efficiently match customer orders with production plans, and to match raw material purchase, production control and sales with distribution and delivery. In the plant, production is no longer labor intensive. Instead, almost everything is automated and intelligent. Static data from field sensors and equipment is integrated into an "online plant". This, in combination with the dynamic data about operations, energy and materials, forms a new online+offline management model. The plant's smart warehouse has achieved end-to-end unmanned operations. In short, this is a smart plant under an agile supply chain model.

Promote Chinese culture overseas

While expanding overseas, Sennics is also enhancing the effort to fulfill its social responsibility abroad. The company operates locally, and provides support for local social and economic development as well as other causes of the local communities.

During the 2022 Chinese New Year, employees from the Thailand plant and their colleagues at the company's Shanghai headquarters extended best wishes to each other through video conferencing, using the language of each other to say "Happy New Year" to each other. Employees from Shanghai produced a short video in Thai to wish colleagues in Thailand good luck. And Thai employees at the Thailand plant also learned to say "Happy New Year" in Chinese. Some Thai girls even wore beautiful Chinese cheongsam to celebrate the festival. Although thousands of miles away from each other, they were warming the heart of each other and inspiring each other.

In the future, Sennics will continue to pursue global collaboration in response to the Chinese Government's "Belt & Road Initiative". The company will continue to fulfill its social responsibility overseas, and to build up its brand in the international markets by leveraging its strength across the industry's value chain.

About Sennics:

Sennics Co., Ltd. ('Sennics') is a leading service provider of polymer additives in the world and a member company of Sinochem International, which is controlled by Sinochem Holdings Corporation Ltd. Headquartered in Shanghai's Pilot Free Trade Zone, Sennics has several R&D centers and production facilities in China. Its main products include rubber antioxidants, insoluble sulfur, rubber vulcanization accelerators, and nitrobenzene. Sennics operates in more than 50 countries and regions. Its distribution network covers regions such as Europe, North America, and Southeast Asia. The company has long-term and stable partnerships with major tire manufacturers worldwide.