Eka Global to host road shows in 3 regions
to help SMEs grab post-COVID-19 global market opportunities
Eka Global, a world leading manufacturer and exporter of longevity packaging based in Thailand, launched a series of nationwide road shows to help Thai SMEs strengthen their capability and seize global market opportunities arising in the post-COVID-19 period.
While helping SMEs grow in the global market, Eka Global will focus on developing its bio-based product group to capture the rising sustainability trend.
Chaiwat Nantiruj, Group CEO, viewed that Thai market will resume this year as the pandemic eases up. In preparing for the upward market, Eka Global has launched a concrete plan to help SMEs, especially those in the food and sweet production sector, to increase production capability and global competitiveness.
By using Eka Global’s innovative longevity packaging, Thai SMEs will be able to extend their product shelf life and export their products to new markets far away. Longer shelf life will reduce their current disadvantage while increasing opportunities to tap into new international markets and production costs.
In the first quarter of 2023, Eka Global plans to organize road shows nationwide to educate Thai SMEs about innovative packaging technology that helps reduce their weakness. The first road show will begin at Prince of Songkhla University in the southern region, followed by Chiang Mai university in the north and Khon Kaen University in the northeast region.
“Eka Global strongly believes in the Thai food producing SMEs and intend to help them grow business opportunity. We earlier supplied our innovative longevity packaging to sweet producing SMEs in India and they have been highly successful. In the beginning they bought ten thousands of packaging per year. Today, their buy ten millions packaging from us every year. From this success model, we hope Thai SMEs will be able to enjoy enormous growth too,” said Chaiwat.
Looking at future packaging industry, Chaiwat said that sustainability will dictate global market trend. This also corresponds to changing consumers’ needs and behavior. Younger generation tends to pay more attention to environment protection. Meanwhile, carbon tax policy in the world’s major markets has also encouraged Thai SMEs to seriously adjust their business plan to embrace sustainability with clear intention to achieve sustainability goals by 2050. Any companies move slowly to follow this trend will be left behind.
Eka Global’s products are 100% recycled. With circular economy concept as a guideline, the company aims to reduce its carbon footprint by expanding its bio-based product line. Eka Global is very confident in the bio-based products considering that modern consumers become more concerned about their impact on the environment. The company, therefore, focuses on research and development of three groups of bio-based products, namely bioplastic (PLA), biodegradable, and PCR. Ultimately, Eka Global aims to increase green product sales to 5% of its total sales.
For 2023, Eka Global will boost its sales of ready-to-eat packaging and pet-food packaging. It aims to achieve 25% growth sales, mainly contributed by new bio-based products. Such growth will enable the company to achieve 1,800 million baht sales, compared to 1,400-1,500 million baht sales in 2022. The 2022 sales were approximately 30-35% higher than 2021 sales of 900-1,000 million baht.
“This year, green products will be our focus. We have done a lot of research and development of such products and started to see satisfactory sales. At the moment the sales from green products, including bioplastic (PLA), biodegrdable and PCR products, account for about 5% of the total sale,” said Chaiwat.
