Visiting our joint venture plant in north China

This week I visited our joint venture plant in Inner Mongolia, a province in north China. From Shanghai it took me 3 flight hours with two different planes and then another 2 hours by car to the small town where the plant is located. The town is called Qipanjing, but it is really more of an industrial park with houses for the employees than a city, even though there is a downtown part with some restaurants and karaoke bars. It is located in the middle of stony desert land, which was even drier than usual due to a horrible drought affecting north and west China earlier this year. Before the government decided to invest in an industrial park in the area, the main income source was kashmir-goats.

When arriving on Monday evening I was invited for dinner at the hotel by our HR manager Henri together with his team. The day after that was spent on a presentation of the company and plant tour. Elkem is a 50/50 owner of the filtration plant together with a local company called Erdos, which is the sole owner of the world's largest ferrosilicon plant with a total of 48 large furnaces (from where we take the smoke and filtrate it, quality test and pack it before delivering it as finished product to China and other countries). Erdos originally made its fortune in kashmir, but has diversified into coal power plants, chemicals, metals, etc. They even own the hotel I stayed at!

Our plant was impressingly well ordered with tools put in their right places and a generally clean appearance - for someone who's been on internal course in Elkem Business System and learnt the importance of things being put in place, waste being reduced and processes being under control, I was glad to see this. We do not have different standards for different parts of the world. This is not to say that HSE (health, security, environment) is not an issue - culturally we in Elkem come from a very different angle than most Chinese companies. For example, Elkem has introduced 4-shift work weeks (meaning that people work only 8 hours a day 5 days a week) on the contrary to previously when the schedule was run on 3-shift work weeks (employees worked 8 hours every day). A big effort has also gone into learning and convincing people the importance of wearing the right work clothes including helmets and glasses. Another issue has been the chaotic and dangerous traffic with frequent accidents outside the plant area, which of course is even harder to control and improve than things that happen within our plant area.

Landscape picture and view from a distance over Qipanjing Industrial Park

The environment is of course a big issue. This is a very polluted area with many heavy industrial companies present, particulary mining and coal power plants. Elkem operates a filtration plant, which improves the environment, but when going by car to the airport one can't help being a bit sad when viewing all the polluting plants and the smog in the air. I choose to be optimistic though, the investments bring necessary capital to the area and there is a pressure both from the Chinese government and international companies to improve on environmental issues.

On a lighter note by the way, I was surprised to learn that 60% of our employees in the JV are women!

Talking of lighter notes... now it's Friday afternoon here and soon time to go home and get ready to go to some friends' "hobby rock-band" concert later tonight! = )

Back in the office again

Back to work again after a great and relaxing vacation week in the middle of China, watching pandas (even cuter live than on Discovery channel ; ) and several old temples, of which one was still inhabitated by buddhist monks.

I have just a few weeks left here in Shanghai, so now it's time to get the final work done. Today I've completed a task about secondary (recycled) aluminium production, going through a lot of uncertain statistics and trying to sum it up for the Asian countries. I've also booked flight tickets for next week's visit to our joint venture plant Erdos in Inner Mongolia in distant, north China. I'm really looking forward to visiting such a remote, exotic place and to get the opportunity to compare a Chinese silicon plant to the Norwegian and Icelandic ones I've seen before - you will get an update from that in the end of next week!

Today I had lunch with an Orkla colleague who, together with a friend, are travelling around the world, dropping by Shanghai this week. I hope my sofa will prove more comfortable than the night train from Xian... = ) My colleague Anette was curious to get an update on the activities in Elkem and Orkla during the last few months, there have been a lot of organisational changes recently to adapt to the turbulent times. With all these guests coming and going it doesn't feel like I'm too far away from home...! Especially not when they bring what I miss the most (well, after family & friends of course) - breakfast items, candy & magazines from Europe...*happy sigh*

From pandas and temples, back to the office again.

Already April!

Time flies so fast, I can't believe it's already April!

Today I have been to a seminar held by the Swedish Chamber of Commerce about "leading organizations to higher performance in difficult times". Quite a title to live up to... but it was an interesting seminar, or at least the discussion that arised in the Q&A session about Swedish/Scandinavian business culture vs. Chinese and American business cultures. In Shanghai there is really an international mix of people at all these kinds of events!

This week it has been quite chaotic in the office, we have all changed desks since the office layout is changed to prepare for the other Orkla companies in Shanghai that are moving into our office within the next few weeks. At one time on Monday morning there were chairs, desks, computer screens and flowerpots standing around everywhere, but somehow we all managed to find our new places and get the normal office work running again. After Easter our colleagues at Borregaard and Lilleborg are moving in.

Otherwise I've continued working on my projects, no travelling these past few weeks. But next week I'm taking holidays to go to Chengdu in Sichuan province together with my boyfriend who will come visit me. Chengdu is famous mainly for two things; very spicy food and its panda breeding centre. Before leaving China it's a must to have seen a panda in the nature!