SECOS appoints COO to strengthen global operations focus

Mr Stacey to bringing valuable commercial and polymer experience from several senior executive roles in the global plastics industry

The Board of sustainable and eco-friendly bioplastics developer SECOS Group Limited is pleased to announce it has appointed experienced international business manager and change management professional Ian Stacey as its Chief Operating Officer, effective 29 October 2018.

Mr Stacey brings valuable commercial and polymer experience from several senior executive roles in the global plastics industry, which will enhance and support SECOS’ international growth strategy. He has a 30-year record of driving shareholder value through sales, product, people and operational initiatives.

Mr Stacey brings meaningful business experience in polymers, petrochemicals and start-up businesses, having run Australian and Chinese subsidiaries for European multinationals with annual turnovers between $40 million and $400 million. He has served in senior executive positions at TOTAL, a supermajor energy company, being General Manager of TOTAL Petrochemicals’ Australian subsidiary, and General Manager of TOTAL’s Polystyrene Business, based in China, and was also a member of TOTAL Petrochemicals’ Asia Management Committee.

In addition, Mr Stacey was Global Head of Sales managing commercial operations of polymer bank note company Innovia (previously known as Securency) for five years. His role was to expand business and to reorganise the commercial operations more efficiently.
More recently, Mr Stacey was Managing Partner at Compliance International, a consultancy that advises companies on ethical, regulatory and compliance risks when operating in foreign jurisdictions or working with foreign governments.

SECOS Chairman, Richard Tegoni, welcomed the appointment, saying:
“We are bringing Ian into the SECOS team at a time that we are achieving increasing and sustained growth in demand for our products. We have recently brought our new resin plant in Malaysia online to keep up with an extensive order pipeline from existing and new customers globally. We are also reviewing our Australian operations which may see greater use of our existing Malaysian and Chinese operations to improve productivity, so having Ian’s international operational experience to draw on will be valuable to SECOS.”
He continued: “Ian will help SECOS to identify and execute on opportunities to extract business efficiencies and drive high performance. This will have the added benefit of enabling our CEO, Stephen Walters, to focus on strategic business imperatives and further develop SECOS’ sales and marketing capabilities.”

The growth in demand, referred to by Tegoni, was also evidenced by the most recent quarterly cash flow statement issued by SECOS for the quarter ended 30 September 2018.
According to this statement, bioplastic sales were $1.7 million, up from $1.2 million for the same period last year, representing growth of 39% including bioplastic resin sales of $0.4 million, representing growth of 296% YoY.

Since bringing the new, 30,000sq ft. Malaysian bioplastic plant – ideally located close to Malaysia’s largest port – online 31 July 2018, initial orders of bioplastic resin have already been delivered to local customers. In addition, trials of the Company’s bioplastic resin have been approved for commercial supply to major bag makers in Malaysia. This generated significant interest from other bag makers who are keen to source locally-made bioplastic resin to comply with the regulatory ban on all single use traditional plastic bags coming into effect in Malaysia on 1 July 2019.

“We will be ramping up production of both our Malaysia and China plants to keep pace with growing global demand and are undertaking a review of our Australian subsidiary Stellar Films to identify how to best utilise the assets going forward given our strategy to be a world leader in bioplastics,” said Tigoni.

Source

Bioplastics MAGAZINE, 2018-11-02.

Supplier

SECOS Group Limited

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