Nip Impressions logo
Thu, Mar 28, 2024 20:02
Visitor
Home
Click here for Pulp & Paper Radio International
Subscription Central
Must reads for pulp and paper industry professionals
Search
My Profile
Login
Logout
Management Side
APP hires former Singapore army general as sustainability chief

SINGAPORE (From news reports) -- Asia Pulp and Paper (APP) has hired banker and former Singapore military general Bernard Tan to run its sustainability department.

Tan joins the firm from ST Engineering, where he ran the Singapore tech firm's marketing operation. He was previously with Singapore-headquartered banking group DBS, whose Indonesian operations he has led since 2009.

In addition to his responsibilities as managing director of sustainability and corporate affairs, Tan takes on the role of Singapore country president for APP's parent company, Sinar Mas, and will be based at the company's headquarters in Pasir Panjang.

Tan's career history includes a stint as Singapore Armed Forces' intelligence chief, and before that a brigadier general. He joined DBS, which is part owned by government investment firm Temasek, in 2008.

The Singaporean, who has no previous experience in sustainability, comes in soon after the departure of long-time sustainability chief Aida Greenbury.

Greenbury, who has spent all of her career in the forestry sector, abruptly left the company in May. The uncompromising Indonesian had led APP's sustainability efforts for 13 years, a career highlighted by a pledge in 2013 for the company to stop cutting down natural forests to feed its pulp and paper mills.

Many of Greenbury's sustainability duties has been taken on by Elim Sritaba, who was recently named APP's director of sustainability - and will report to Tan. Sritaba moved across from APP's sister company Sinarmas Forestry, where she ran human resources.

Greenbury's departure came some months after the arrival of Singaporean Lu Ching Lau as head of corporate affairs, who came in to run a unit that was previously under Greenbury's purview.

Tan's arrival comes just as Randy Salim, APP's head of international communications, moves on. Salim, a former TV presenter and World Bank communications executive, was with the company for just over a year and a half.

Scrutiny of APP has centred around the construction of a massive new pulp mill in South Sumatra, a US$2.6 billion facility with a capacity to produce up to 2.5 million tonnes of pulp a year, though this figure was recently reported to be significantly higher.

Environmentalists are adamant that OKI mill does not have enough planation fiber to feed itself, which will mean more deforestation, and more of the peatland fires and land disputes that put Indonesia's agroforestry sector on the global environmental heatmap for a few months every year.

Tan will have to see APP through the imminent hot and dry haze season, an annual affair that causes vast areas across Southeast Asia to be blanketed in smoke from burning Indonesian peatlands. Many of these fires are started deliberately to clear land to make way for pulp and paper and palm oil plantations.

APP was heavily implicated in the haze season of 2015, which prompted companies including Singapore's biggest supermarket chain, NTUC Fairprice, to remove all APP products from its shelves. This ban that has remained in place ever since, costing APP millions in lost revenue in the city-state.

The haze also prompted Singapore's banking industry body, Association of Banks in Singapore (ABS), which represents foreign banks as well as the three largest local banks - including DBS - to review their lending and investment policies, as many have financed haze-linked companies.

Among Tan's first duties will be to report how APP has prepared for the haze season in a media briefing in Singapore on Wednesday.

****

Jim Thompson is back again...with a new book on a taboo subject: the personalities in the pulp & paper industry. Jim has written in the past on many subjects based on his four plus decades in the worldwide pulp and paper industry. This new book is packed full of information valuable to the senior member of the industry as well as the recent entrant. A must for every pulp and paper library.


Printer-friendly format

 





Powered by Bondware
News Publishing Software

The browser you are using is outdated!

You may not be getting all you can out of your browsing experience
and may be open to security risks!

Consider upgrading to the latest version of your browser or choose on below: