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Pledge for the Environment: Kimin Tanoto’s Journey to a Greener Future

JAKARTA, INDONESIA – Media OutReach – 17 June 2021 There’s no doubt that climate change has emerged as one of the biggest challenges humanity has ever encountered. With greenhouse gas emissions at a record high in 2020, there is a need for urgent actions to combat climate change and its impacts. Recognising the rising urgency, Gunung Raja Paksi (GRP), a key player in the steel industry, emphasises its commitment to fight climate change with several forward-thinking green strategies.

Following Kimin Tanoto‘s appointment as the Commissioner of GRP, the company experienced a period of rapid growth as he forged new partnerships with local and international investors. Marching on, he is looking to establish GRP as an industrial leader for climate change action by implementing an array of green manufacturing and business processes.

The company has recently put forward its Transparent, Accountable, and Professional (TAP) management framework to showcase its strong and unwavering commitment towards fighting climate change. Alongside this extensive transformation plan, Kimin Tanoto and GRP has made a range of technology-based investments, making significant progress towards addressing climate change concerns.

GRP shares that its future plans also include investments in a fully integrated and environmentally-friendly coke factory and nickel smelter plant. With coke required to produce steel in a blast furnace, GRP seeks to employ advanced combustion technology to convert waste heat into electrical power for nickel smelting, further pushing the process towards a lower emissions output. By employing this eco-conscious production method, the ultimate goal of Kimin Tanoto and GRP is to achieve “Net-Zero” emissions and create a greener supply chain.

A Progressive Agenda

“Important changes will continue to be made in the face of bigger challenges in the future,” Kimin Tanoto shares. With this in mind, Kimin is leading an Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) Task Force through the Indonesian Iron and Steel Association (IISIA) to push for an industry wide effort to move towards more sustainable steel making as well as educating industry players about the importance of green technologies and embracing the importance of carbon credits to offset emissions.

By researching and deploying zero-carbon steelmaking technologies – ranging from carbon capture and storage tech to material efficiency – this steadfast commitment positions GRP at the forefront of change within the metal industry of Indonesia.

Further, Kimin Tanoto hopes to educate, inspire and empower other businesses in Indonesia and beyond. He also strives to pave the way for these prominent players in Indonesia to join the fight for a greener future alongside GRP.

With a sincere commitment to the environment and the rest of the world, Kimin Tanoto believes it is time for businesses globally to make genuine progress in how they adopt sustainable practices and respond to the global climate crisis.

About Gunung Raja Paksi

With a global base across 40+ countries, Gunung Raja Paksi (GRP) is now one of Southeast Asia’s largest, privately-owned vertically integrated steel companies. It was successfully listed on the Jakarta Stock Exchange in 2019. For more information, please visit: https://www.gunungrajapaksi.com/.

About Kimin Tanoto

Kimin Tanoto is a serial entrepreneur and business leader who has founded multiple businesses in a wide array of niche industries – including asset management, cement and steel. He currently serves as the Commissioner of Gunung Raja Paksi. For more information, please visit: https://kimintanoto.com/.

#KiminTanoto

Mitsubishi to Invest in Wind Power Project in Laos

Mitsubishi to invest in wind farm project in Laos

Japan’s Mitsubishi Corp is to invest in a 600 MW wind farm project in Laos that will export power to Vietnam.

Laos Expected to Extend Covid-19 Lockdown Measures Next Week

Laos likely to extend lockdown this week

Dr. Phonepaseuth Xayamoungkhoun spoke at the daily briefing by the National Taskforce today, stating that Covid-19 lockdown measures are expected to be extended.

Vaccinated Man Confirmed as New Case of Covid-19

Covid-19 update

Laos has confirmed just one new case of Covid-19 today, involving a 24-year-old man in Vientiane Capital who had received a first dose of Covid-19 vaccine.

Luang Prabang Roads Expanded To Facilitate Traffic

Road Upgrades in Luang Prabang

Authorities have upgraded and expanded several major roads in central Luang Prabang City to facilitate traffic within the municipality.

CUHK Business School Research Finds the Rise in High Speed Rail Leads to a Significant Improvement in Airline Services

HONG KONG SAR – Media OutReach – 17 June 2021 – Trains are making a comeback. After losing ground for decades to the far sexier and faster travel by plane, people are increasingly making a return to good old fashion rail as a viable mode of getting around (at least for short to medium distance trips), thanks in part to rising concerns over the impact of air travel on global carbon emissions as well as the coming online of more and more high speed rail which has made travel by train faster and more comfortable.

And nowhere has this boom been more apparent than in China, which in the space of just over a decade has built the longest high speed rail network in the world, stretching nearly 38,000 km and accounting for two-thirds of all high speed rail track in the world. This boom has also been mirrored in air travel, with the sector in China transporting a record 660 million passengers in 2019 before the pandemic hit.

The fast pace of growth in these rival sectors in China provided a group of researchers with the ideal conditions to study how this second coming of the golden age of rail has affected airlines. The study, titled Competition and Quality: Evidence from High-Speed Railways and Airlines, found that the rise in high speed rail led to a significant improvement in airline services, mainly in the form of reduction in flight delays.

“While it’s true that both flight volumes as well as airline choice has grown dramatically in recent years as China’s aviation market has opened up, it’s also no secret to anyone who’s been through an airport in the country that serious flight delays are a chronic problem,” says Yang Yang, Assistant Professor at the School of Hospitality and Tourism Management at The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) Business School and one of the study’s co-authors.

“This has made high speed rail a really attractive way for people to get around between cities, and it was an opportunity for us to study how competition between the two modes of transportation affected airline service quality.”

Shorter Flight Delays

The research, which was carried out in collaboration with Prof. Hanming Fang at the University of Pennsylvania and Prof. Long Wang at ShanghaiTech University, looked at close to 900,000 non-stop domestic flights from Beijing by 41 airlines to 113 destinations between 2009 and 2012. To measure service quality, the researchers focused on flight delays in arrivals and departures, as well as travel time.

They compared the length of delays for flights to 11 cities that are also served by the Beijing Shanghai High Speed Rail, a 1,318-kilometre long track, to flights that that were not served by the line. The study found that the entry of this high speed track in 2011 led to a reduction of an average of 2.54 minutes in delays in flight arrivals. It also found that the launch of high speed rail services led to a 2.5 percentage point-reduction in arrival delays of 15 minutes or more.

These results were stronger for airlines did not operate on the hub model (such as budget carriers that fly point-to-point) and which have less market power, as well as flights on short and medium distance routes.

The Need for (High) Speed

Whereas high speed rail has operated in different parts of the world for decades, (Japan’s Shinkansen, the world’s first high speed rail system, began in 1964, whereas France’s TGV launched in 1981) China only really got into the game well after the turn of the millennium. While planning reached back as early as the 1990s’, it was not until 2008 that the country launched its first high speed passenger-only service between Beijing and Tianjin, comprising of a 117-kilometre line. The boom that followed saw tens of thousands of kilometres of high speed track laid in the following decade in a network that now covers nearly every single province and region.

And the country is not done. China is seeking to almost double its high speed network to around 70,000 kilometres by 2035. Also, while train speeds have increased from a maximum of 200 kilometres per hour to 350 kilometres per hour, the country is pouring resources into developing even faster rolling stock, including a Maglev prototype that is capable of reaching up to a blistering 620 kilometres per hour.

Going back to the latest study, the researchers then sought to find out whether the reduction in flight delays following the launch of a directly competing high speed rail service was due to direct efforts by an airline company to improve the quality of its service, or whether there was some other external variable at play.

“There’s only so many ways an airline can reduce travel times,” says Prof. Yang, adding that for example it was difficult to reduce flight times without sacrificing safety or buying a completely different model of aircraft.

The researchers found that the coming online of high speed rail led to a reduction in delays in flight departures of an average 5.28 minutes, leading them to suggest that the entry of competing high speed rail services drove airlines to directly speed up checking-in and boarding processes, as well as by improve training for crew.

“Everyone knows it’s hell to sit on the tarmac waiting for a plane to take off,” says Prof. Yang. “Airlines can see that if their market is about to be encroached by high speed rail that they should focus on getting their passengers off the ground as quickly as possible.”

The study also found a 1.39-minute reduction in average runway taxiing times at the destination airport, although the researchers noted was something that airlines are unlikely to be able to control.

Quantifying the Benefits

By looking at flights on specific dates and times, Prof. Yang and her collaborators also eliminated a slew of alternative explanations for the improved timeliness by airlines, from reduced air passenger and airport congestion as a result of increased transportation volumes, to restructuring in flight schedules.

Using the estimates of the time saved, the researchers roughly calculated that the launch of competing high speed rail services would have conservatively saved passengers an aggregate of just under 2,100 Chinese yuan per flight.

When this number was applied to the outbound Beijing destinations that were also served by the Beijing-Shanghai line, it means that the introduction of just this one line would have translated to total passenger savings of 15.72 billion yuan, assuming that that airline travellers flying out of Beijing purchased a round-trip ticket and a discount rate of 5 percent, and that comes even without taking into account reductions in airfare as a result of increased competition.

“We live in an age where the price of a train ticket is still cheaper than flying, but the time cost of travelling by train is fast dropping,” adds Prof. Yang. “The findings speaks volumes about the disruptive competition that high speed rail represents to air travel.”

Reference:

Fang, Hanming and Wang, Long and Yang, Yang, Competition and Quality: Evidence from High-Speed Railways and Airlines (June 26, 2020). PIER Working Paper No. 20-022, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3636308 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3636308

This article was first published in the China Business Knowledge (CBK) website by CUHK Business School: https://bit.ly/3g0CC2l.

About CUHK Business School

CUHK Business School comprises two schools – Accountancy and Hotel and Tourism Management – and four departments – Decision Sciences and Managerial Economics, Finance, Management and Marketing. Established in Hong Kong in 1963, it is the first business school to offer BBA, MBA and Executive MBA programmes in the region. Today, CUHK Business School offers 10 undergraduate programmes and 18 graduate programmes including MBA, EMBA, Master, MSc, MPhil and Ph.D. The School currently has more than 4,800 undergraduate and postgraduate students from 20+ countries/regions.

In the Financial Times Executive MBA ranking 2020, CUHK EMBA is ranked 15th in the world. In FT‘s 2021 Global MBA Ranking, CUHK MBA is ranked 48th. CUHK Business School has the largest number of business alumni (40,000+) among universities/business schools in Hong Kong – many of whom are key business leaders.

More information is available at http://www.bschool.cuhk.edu.hk or by connecting with CUHK Business School on:

Facebook: www.facebook.com/cuhkbschool

Instagram: www.instagram.com/cuhkbusinessschool

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/school/cuhkbusinessschool

WeChat: CUHKBusinessSchool

#CUHKBusinessSchool

AXA AFFIN offers COVID-19 Complimentary Support Fund to assist its customers and to spur vaccination

  • Complimentary Support Fund is exclusively for AXA AFFIN Life Insurance customers with medical policies
  • Customers affected by COVID-19 will have access to funds totalling RM200,000*
  • To spur vaccination, the fund is applicable for vaccination complications or side effects

KUALA LUMPUR, MALAYSIA – Media OutReach – 17 June 2021 – The recent surge in COVID-19 cases in the country has further prompted AXA AFFIN Life Insurance Berhad to continue reaching out to meet the immediate needs of its customers by offering an extended COVID-19 Complimentary Support Fund. Initially introduced in February 2021, the Complimentary Support Fund has now doubled up its total fund amounting to RM200,000 exclusively for its customers with an AXA AFFIN medical policy. The funds will be dispersed at no additional cost to customers affected by COVID-19 or those who have complications or side effects arising after their COVID-19 vaccination.

The fund is available from now until 31 August 2021 or when the fund is fully exhausted, whichever comes first.

The key aim is to support the health and well-being of AXA AFFIN Life Insurance customers by providing immediate relief in the form of cash assistance.

The complimentary support offers cash assistance*, including: –

  • RM1,000 cash if quarantine in a government designated quarantine centre due to COVID-19
  • RM2,000 cash if quarantined in a government or private hospital due to COVID-19
  • RM10,000 cash for our customers’ immediate family if Death due to COVID-19**
  • Up to RM10,000 for ICU hospitalisation due to COVID-19***
  • RM2,000 cash for stroke due to COVID-19 vaccination side effects****
  • FREE COVID-19 PCR Test worth RM190

“We are pledging this fund as we know it will make a difference to our customers. It is crucial to get these vital funds quickly into their hands to help ease some of the burden and anxiety should their health be affected by the COVID-19 infection or the vaccination,” said Kelvin Wong, Officer-in-Charge, AXA AFFIN Life Insurance Berhad.

For more information, log on to www.axa.com.my or contact your nearest AXA AFFIN Life Insurance agents.

*Terms & conditions apply

**Cash Assistance of RM10,000 for Death due to COVID-19 shall end on 30 June 2021.

***RM10,000 for non-digital channel medical policyholder and RM3,000 for digital channel medical policyholder.

****The vaccine must be authorised or comes from the National COVID-19 immunisation programme, Malaysia and must be administered in Malaysia. The side effects must manifest within 14 days after the vaccination is administered.

ABOUT THE AXA GROUP

The AXA Group is a worldwide leader in insurance and asset management, with 153,000 employees serving 105 million clients in 54 countries. In 2020, IFRS revenues amounted to Euro 96.7 billion and underlying earnings to Euro 4.3 billion. AXA had Euro 1,032 billion in assets under management as of December 31, 2020.

The AXA ordinary share is listed on compartment A of Euronext Paris under the ticker symbol CS (ISN FR 0000120628 – Bloomberg: CS FP – Reuters: AXAF.PA). AXA’s American Depository Share is also quoted on the OTC QX platform under the ticker symbol AXAHY.

The AXA Group is included in the main international SRI indexes, such as Dow Jones Sustainability Index (DJSI) and FTSE4GOOD.

It is a founding member of the UN Environment Programme’s Finance Initiative (UNEP FI) Principles for Sustainable Insurance and a signatory of the UN Principles for Responsible Investment.

This press release and the regulated information made public by AXA pursuant to article L. 451-1-2 of the French Monetary and Financial Code and articles 222-1 et seq. of the Autorité des marchés financiers’ General Regulation are available on the AXA Group website (axa.com).

ABOUT AXA AFFIN LIFE INSURANCE BERHAD

Incorporated in February 2006, AXA AFFIN Life Insurance Berhad is a joint venture company between AFFIN Bank Berhad and AXA Group, a worldwide financial protection leader, which is headquartered in Paris. Leveraging on the AXA Group’s strength as a financial protection expert and AFFIN Bank’s local knowledge and diversified network, AXA AFFIN Life is focused on helping individuals manage risk and achieve their financial goals. AXA AFFIN Life will strive to build close and lasting relationship with its customers, offering them care, support and advice with the highest standard of professional ethics.

#AXAAFFINLifeInsuranceBerhad

Librestream Brings its Onsight Augmented Reality Solution to Japan and Establishes Localized Sales and Support Operations

The technology delivers robust remote collaboration capabilities that enhance safety, efficiency, and resiliency for enterprises

 

WINNIPEG, MB – Media OutReach – 17 June 2021 – Librestream, the #1-rated provider of the Onsight augmented reality (AR) and remote collaboration solutions, has expanded its international presence to Japan with the establishment of a Tokyo office and a local team of staff, supporting its growing customer base in the APAC region. Since 2019, the Japanese market increasingly adopted Librestream’s Onsight platform, with user growth expanding over 300% in that timeframe.

As the third-largest economy in the world and fourth-largest in total exports, continuous workforce improvement via technology and innovation is critical to maintaining competitive positioning. The Onsight platform is utilized by a broad swath of industries, including those that account for Japan’s top exports: cars and vehicle parts ($136B), integrated circuits ($30.7B), machinery with individual functions ($20B), and passenger and cargo ships ($13.7B).

“Japan is an industrial powerhouse and its economy is diverse and advanced; our Onsight solution support the multitudinous industries in the region, as well as provide enhanced local and international service support,” said John Bishop, Librestream President & CEO. “Onsight also addresses the local demographic challenges of an aging workforce and shrinking population by capturing knowledge from experienced workers, delivering just-in-time training, and enabling companies to remotely manage their industrial assets located anywhere in the world.”

Addressing the opportunity and the challenges, Onsight’s core products bring the following benefits to the Japanese market:

  • Onsight Connect remote expert assistance: real-time collaborative environment to remotely inspect, troubleshoot, and resolve issues in the field; effectively distributing knowledge and accelerating decision making with capabilities including live translation to bridge language barriers, object recognition, and sensor data integration
  • Onsight Flow digital work instructions: transforms paper-based processes into digital work instructions that provide step-by-step instructions to complete a job, capture data, and add to a knowledge base
  • Onsight Workspace centralized knowledge base: provides the workforce with secure and immediate access to information needed to complete work safely and efficiently
  • Thermal Cube and Onsight Hub: unique in the world to support video and thermal data management in all rugged environments. As a device-agnostic company, Librestream’s Onsight platform also supports use on any smartphone, tablet, computer, and wearable.

Librestream’s dedicated expansion into Japan has also received the support of the Canadian Embassy in Japan, “We are happy to see another innovative Canadian company enter the Japanese market and look forward to working with Librestream to support their business development activities,” said Mr. Tracy Reynolds, Minister (Commercial), Embassy of Canada to Japan.

About Librestream

Librestream transforms workforces through advanced AR and AI solutions that scale knowledge across businesses to enhance safety, efficiency and resiliency. With the Onsight augmented reality knowledge platform, Librestream helps workers and distributed teams gain immediate access to the content, people, relevant data, and guidance needed to solve business challenges. Librestream’s global Forbes 2000 customer base includes energy, manufacturing, service, aerospace, and defense enterprises with aggregate annual revenues totaling $3.2T. The company has been honored with recognition including ranking as the #1 AR remote assistance solution provider by independent research firm, Verdantix, named an IDC Innovator, and winner of the Field Service WBR Innovation Award. Visit Librestream at www.librestream.com and connect with us on LinkedIn, Facebook & Twitter.

Librestream press kit here.

#Librestream