How do your partnerships with hotels work?
Somer Gundogdu: Our interaction with hotels does not start at the time of opening; it starts much before that.
We go to the properties and asses the needs at the time of construction and we start to work with the management or the owners, understand the needs, install our systems and programmes to ensure that on the first day they open, all of the floors are shiny, all the food is top quality, nobody gets food poisoning, and all of the linen is fresh.
Taking the example of laundry, what services do you offer hotels?
SG: Every offering that is served to every single customer is unique and tailored to their needs — starting with the products that we serve along with the dosing stations, the locations of the dosing stations, the training programmes and the support that they require.
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JP: We are providing new technologies with two rinses only that save water and energy, [using] soft chemicals that are not aggressive on the linen so you can use the linen for longer.
If you can use the linen for three years instead of two years, that brings huge value for the hotel industry.
We are offering this low-energy, low-water-use sustainable approach and we also then offer new materials to wrap the laundry, the sheets or the blankets, new plastics, shrink films which are absolutely fabulous. These are new innovations that improve the look.
In what other ways will Sealed Air Corporation innovate going forward?
JP: We are spending $150 million in research so that’s a huge asset for us to be able to use that research to bring innovative solutions. In the institutional business we have the best machines in the industry to clean the floors and make them more shiny in hotels and so on, these are our TASKI machines.
We have the most efficient dispensing machines for laundry and kitchens. In the packaging business we have these shrink films, we have 25 and 30 micro layering steps on polyethylene films which allow an improvement of film properties — this is what innovation is for.
And on the sustainability note, where are the most opportunities for hotels to really save?
JP: It’s mostly about saving in manpower because if you introduce new technologies and new ways of cleaning you can make your manpower more efficient. We have programmes of recycling and donations with hotels. We have recently signed one with Shangri-La in Asia to recycle wasted soap and give that for disaster relief situations, we have lots of those programmes.
SG: These are the programmes that we are bringing into the Middle East as well. When we talk about sustainability, the biggest saving a hotel operator can get is through his laundry, because laundry is the key area where all of the laundering operation is done — think of all the washing machines and the water spent over there.
The low temperature programme that we are introducing to all of our customers right now gives a much lower wash temperature than the wash temperature that they are used to. What it gives is a substantial energy saving on their electricity bill.
It’s substantially less water footprint, so we go to the hotels and assess their carbon footprint and tailor-make a carbon footprint reduction programme for all of those properties.
In 2013 you become CEO, what are your priorities for the year?
JP: My priorities are going to be to finish the integration of Diversey and engage our employees into the future of this company. I am a strong believer that the success of companies is decided by the employees.
They have to be engaged into the growth project that we are going to have. And I do believe that the strategy of this company is towards investing in emerging countries, that’s where we are going, that’s what we are doing.
But it means also that we are going to need to preserve what we have in the existing footprint that we have. At the very same time we are going to organically grow disproportionately in what is generally called the new world. Employees have to understand that project, they have to buy it and that’s how we are going to grow faster.
I have been three months in the job and I have been to three continents and I am spending a lot of time travelling; that’s very important to assess locally what our strengths are, our opportunities and how we can leverage those strengths.
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