Anyone who has ever been to Thailand might wonder how challenging it must be to clean the streets in a big city like Bangkok, yet alone the indoor facilities that are among the largest in the world.
Preben Laustsen, Managing Director of HAKO Group East Asia Ltd in Bangkok, knows a thing or two about clean floors and streets, having dedicated his entire career to professional cleaning. The graduate economist, who is from Denmark, has lived in the country with his Thai family for 18 years and - in cooperation with InterGest Thailand - serves the entire East Asia region with an extremely lean and efficient infrastructure.
HAKO is a leading international manufacturer of professional floor cleaning machines and provider of services for cleaning and municipal technology. The head office is located in Bad Oldesloe near Hamburg (Germany), and the HAKO Group has further production facilities in Germany, Poland and the USA.
The East Asian business, which HAKO manages from Thailand, is growing particularly dynamically - but in recent months, due to the pandemic, in a new format:
"By now, our team of ten people here in Thailand and the additional employees in Abu Dhabi, Singapore and South Korea are of course no longer training in person in our competence center, as before, but online. We have successfully adapted to the new situation, set up an online infrastructure and learned how to conduct professionally both, sales & technical trainings virtually and online via our set up. Covid or not, of course we continue to look after and support our distributors!" laughs Preben, whose daily life has changed significantly. "Until Covid came, I was mostly on the road within the region”.
It all started about a decade ago, when the German HAKO headquarters decided to dig deeper into the market potential of the Southeast Asian region, and thus set up a center of excellence for dealer development, sales and service training. HAKO East Asia needed a company that could support the auxiliary services, particularly accounting and legal. Amongst a group of companies vetted for undertaking this by Hako East Asia, one company, Bangkok Base with Alexander Polgar leading InterGest Thailand, was entrusted with the accounting and legal support services of the young Thai HAKO company: The result thereby was the establishment of the HAKO company in Thailand, followed by a steady expansion into China and Vietnam, again with the support of the respective InterGest partners in these countries.
When Daniel Walentowski, subsequent manager of InterGest Thailand, took over, he was faced with a challenge: "HAKO was one of my first major clients at InterGest Thailand and the framework conditions were demanding: Preben was often travelling, we always had to keep in close contact with him, for example to get his approval for accounting issues and sometimes legal issues related to the operations of the company. This was a challenge in some places and required a good deal of flexibility from both sides. But we have adapted perfectly to each other over the years, and today we can manage even more complex tasks together within a very short time, without any additional stress."
Preben describes the collaboration this way: "Daniel is someone I trust absolutely. I know quite well the effort it took him when we first started working together. Today, everything runs very standard and smoothly with the processes set up. You could perhaps say “it’s boring”. In this case, of course, “boring” is good, very good in fact! I know that our local accounting, payment management, payroll and tax returns are in good hands. Everything runs fluently and without stress. Our head office in Germany, which receives the reporting from InterGest Thailand, also appreciates that. Besides, I can call Daniel at any time and talk to him openly about any of our related issues, I really appreciate his advice."
HAKO Group East Asia Ltd has developed excellently over the past decade, even to the limits of organic growth. Preben is of course suitably pleased, but is looking further ahead: “Pre Covid we had reached the maximum, so the next thing to consider is growth outside traditional organic ways. As it now appears that the pandemic is mostly a thing of the past. The countries in Asia and Middle East are opening up again, hence we will now move forward with the next phase in our growth plan. We still see very big opportunities for us here in this region, and with our expected growth we will also need continuously good support and service from InterGest.”
