What is the true meaning of Leadership?
We at Insights Success believe that leadership is exclusively defined by every individual who is given that responsibility. We believe it is about always knowing that there is a light at the end of the tunnel. It is about being unapologetically vocal in expressing one’s opinions. Moreover, we firmly believe it is about inspiring and empowering others to become leaders.
In the light of this rendition of leadership, we’d like to introduce you to May Yap, the Chairman, Managing Director and CEO of LHT Holdings, who has been driving the company’s growth for more than twenty years, and has been setting her own benchmarks of leadership.
May was appointed as the Acting Managing Director on 26.02.2016 and was re-designated as the Chairman, Managing Director and CEO on 10th February 2017. Leveraging her 20+ years’ experience, she plays a key role in exploring opportunities in new markets.
May’s responsibility is to monitor market developments and to ensure that the company’s product development efforts are aligned to market demands. She is actively involved in the pallet rental business in Singapore, Malaysia and Vietnam.
May holds a Diploma in Sales and Marketing from the Marketing Institute of Singapore and has successfully completed the Operation Management Innovation (OMNI) programme conducted by The Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*Star) in 2011. She is also a member of the Singapore Institute of Directors.
May draws inspiration from a role model—who has always been and continues to be a visibly prominent inspiration in her life—her mother. “I am learning from her to talk less and work more, like what the common saying goes, ‘actions speaks louder than words’. She exhibits perseverance, determination, and has a never die attitude. She has a kindness portrait appearance does many good deeds, and is always filial to her seniors. As a woman, she has an attitude that she can do whatever a man can do. She self-built her farm houses for chicken and pigs and had to oversee eight siblings without any complaints,” May expresses.
The Ascension towards Progress
Established since 1977, LHT is one of the largest manufacturing companies of high-quality wooden pallets, boxes, and crates in Singapore. The company has a staff strength of 180 involved in the areas of administration, manufacturing, and warehousing. The Company mainly engages in the manufacture and supply of wooden pallets and cases for the packing of industrial products. The timber-related products segment is mainly engaged in the trading of raw timber-related products. Most of its clientele is in the electronics, petrochemicals, solar, warehousing logistics, and engineering sectors.
As a traditional wood pallet manufacturer, LHR saw changes in the timber industry over the years. “At LHT, we face many challenges, beside innovating products, we are facing the new generation gaps where it is hard to find workers and staff entering in timber trade. We are fortunate that our government provide funds to cope the digital transformation,” May expresses.
Since 2009, LHT has taken the opportunities to collaborate with A*STAR which is a catalyst, enabler and convenor of significant research initiatives among the research community in Singapore and beyond.
“Our objective is to reduce our carbon footprint. However, low-carbon shop floor machineries, equipment and processes come with high price tags which makes the final product costly and uncompetitive. But, if we could recycle waste and convert it into some raw materials in our processes, we can be a game changer in our sustainability journey,” she adds.
The collaborated projects with A*STAR ensure LHT’s ability towards providing long term sustainability to associates, customers, partners, stakeholders, shareholders and friends, and recognize the team efforts, goals and the company stability.
To know more about LHT Holdings and its innovative products, click here.
Exhibiting Excellence
Talking about the company’s proud achievements, May recalls, in 2004, in Asia, with many countries adopting implementation of ISPM15 (International Standard Phytosanitary Measure, version 15), a guideline of which required ‘Wood Packaging Material(WPM) For International Trade’ to undergo heat treatment process or fumigation.
Pertaining to this, LHT started innovating and re-engineering its pallets under the category ‘Innovative Process Products Convention. With this turn around the company began to see its sales recover and escalating from the downfall it witnessed in 2003. As a result, LHT’s products transformed the market using a lower carbon footprint processed wood that was made from waste wood materials.
In 2018, LHT was awarded the Climate Action Champion and EcoFriend Awards by NEA. The use of this wood waste recycling technology terminated the company’s own wood waste disposal fees and saved a few hundred thousand dollars, and in contrary saved 4,500 trees annually.
Passing on the Keys to Success
Showing her support to the younger generation of business leaders and entrepreneurs, May says that LHT always welcomes and encourages budding entrepreneurs. The company believes that if someone can do better and do good deeds to the earth we live on, we should let them perform. May firmly follows the saying, “From the day we born we bring nothing to this world, and upon our death we take nothing back too And by doing good deeds, we learn from the society and give back to the society. By giving kindness to everyone it is giving kindness to ourselves.”
Talking about the company future, May states, “The company future is optimistic, as we have achieved zero waste green manufacturing since we are successful in our wood waste recycling by turning wood waste into useful green products. We are now performing an R&D project in looking up new ways on how to recycle plastic waste with wood wastes. Mergers and acquisitions are in the planning phase, to make the business more sustainable and induce longevity growth and transformation into 4.0 smart factory.”
“We are always conscious of our role in the conservation of natural resources. Recycling is one of the many efforts that reflect our commitment towards mitigating climate change and deforestation,” she adds.
