Plastic Neutral, with Kian Seah

Money Tales

In this episode of Money Tales, our guest is Kian Seah. This episode is all about recycling. Recycling materials, re-cycling money, re-cycling opportunities, and re-cycling lives. Kian shares an incredible story of transforming family shame into pride and success. Kian grew up in a household where the entire family participated in recycling other people’s used items to get by. At the time, recycling was seen as a ‘dirty’ job – one his parents asked him to hide from others. Decades later, Kian and his siblings have turned that same recycling work into one of Malaysia’s largest companies, creating immense value by giving discarded plastics and other materials a new life.

Kian is the founder and managing director of Heng Hiap Industries (HHI). Established since 2002, HHI is a fully integrated plastic recycling company, being the FIRST company in the world to receive Ocean Bound Plastic Certification co-developed by NGO Zero Plastic Oceans and Control Union. Having developed Smart Plastics to address plastic manufacturers’ need for high quality, customized recycled plastic resin, Kian also designed the Smart Factory in Johor Bahru from the ground up. The factory is GBI-certified (“Green Building Index”) Gold and is now producing PLASHAUS Ocean Plastic while implementing a full track-and-trace program that directly addresses plastic consumers’ concerns about marine pollution.

HHI Smart Plastics has reached the shores of 38 countries globally including China, Japan, Australia, India, and multiple countries in Europe, meeting customers’ high-performance standards and stringent requirements in quality. In the last 18 years, Kian and HHI have won multiple accolades for business leadership and product innovation – the more notable ones being: the Junior Chamber International (JCI) Ten Outstanding Young Persons (TOYP) in the World in the category of environmental leadership (2013), The Edge newspaper of Malaysia named him “The Michelangelo of Recycling” (2018) and most recently, Frost and Sullivan awarded HHI “2020 Malaysia Smart Waste Solutions Technology Innovation Award”.