The future of waste handling: A better place (4 of 4)

Posted on 06/24/201906/25/2019 by The New Economy

This is the fourth part in our video series with Molok North America, exploring the waste management challenges faced by the US and Canada, and one of the technological solutions to make recycling and composting more convenient and efficient. If you want to start from the beginning, watch part one of The future of waste handling: In a perfect world.

Mona Hillis, co-owner of Molok North America:

I want to make sure Molok continues going down the path of its one true vision, of really: sustainability.

And, no matter how big the company grows, no matter how many collection trucks we have out on the road, and how many employees there are; that we all feel like we’re one big unit – everyone being a family – moving towards a bigger goal. Of making the world a better place.

Susan Antler, Executive Director, Compost Council of Canada

We all have a responsibility. We’re all part of the continuum; the cycle of life that has to be much more respectful in terms of waste management.

We as human beings are not the only creatures in the world. And so we all have to have the will, we have to have the convenience, we have to have the systems and the trust that it’s going to be done well and right.

Narrator:

The UN has given us until 2030 to fix our attitudes – and more importantly our actions – around production and consumption. We need to be thinking differently, and we need to be thinking very, very big. But we also need to believe that we can make the world a better place. It’s easy to become disillusioned – but progress is being made, every single day.

Bryan Staley, President and CEO, Environmental Research and Education Foundation:

Well I think we’re in for some exciting and dynamic changes. I think we’ll see increasing collaboration between product manufacturers and waste management entities, which will create a shift in the design of and the materials used for, packaging products and goods. This will make a much larger portion of the discards reusable or recyclable. For example, if most plastic packaging were to move to highly recyclable and usable resins such as PET and HDPE, this will serve to create stronger and broader end markets.

Brent Wootton PhD, Vice President of Applied Research, Fleming College:

Diversion of food waste is really something we need to improve on. France as an example issued a national ban on organics in the municipal waste stream. We need leadership like that in Canada.

Food waste of course fills up landfill sites, and costs the Canadian economy from CAD 30-100bn a year.

There are all kinds of innovative technologies. Companies like Molok have novel approaches to waste management, and there are lots of other solutions that could be explored and implemented.

Tim Corcoran, Vice President of Business Development for Molok North America:

Where we need to go is to get as much out of landfill as possible.

If you look at a waste depot in Finland, for example: the smallest container will be the waste. If you look at one here in North America, the biggest container’s the waste. We need to change that. And we need to educate people on why it’s important to change it, why we need to get the waste out of the landfills, we need to make sure that the plastics are being dealt with so they don’t clog up the oceans. And we need to make sure that we’re putting the organics where they should go, because that can be turned into energy; something that can actually help society.

I think as a waste management company, we have a responsibility to work collaboratively with others, to educate the communities on what needs to be done.

Mark Hillis, CEO and President of Molok North America:

There’s a lot of challenges facing the world of waste management and recycling into the future. And in the next five years and even 10 years out, there’s many things that have to happen. Efficiency, as far as collection is concerned, and as it relates to global warming. The consumer’s ability to separate the appropriate recyclables into the proper streams without contamination. The industry’s ability to take those recyclables and turn them back into usable commodities, that can be fed back into the supply chain. Those are all really really important over the next five to 10 years. And they’re significant from a global health perspective, and making the world a better place.

Molok is poised to really meet all of those demands. If you go back to the very basic concepts of Molok: the fact that it’s a space saver, the fact that it’s semi-underground, and as a result waste is kept cool, odours are at a minimum. The fact that it’s usually 1.5 to 2.5 times the volume of a similar sized container by weight. Those are terrific advantages.

If we can reduce the service frequency, say for an apartment building, by 30-50 percent a year. What are the advantages that brings, from a truck traffic perspective, from a safety perspective, from a CO2 emissions perspective? Wear and tear on equipment?

All those things that Molok brings to the table because of its simple design from Veikko Salli. Those advantages are all there, and bring efficiencies in so many different ways to the end user. That I think Molok is poised very well to meet the future needs of the waste industry within the world.

Tim Corcoran, Vice President of Business Development for Molok North America:

The future is very bright. We have been in Canada for 20 years, and we continue to expand. Our business continues to grow at double digit increases every year.

I’d like to see us everywhere. But I think in the short term, our goal is to educate the municipalities, the various levels of government, parks: educate the community on the alternatives. And get to the point where we are accepted and referred to as the alternative to the conventional types of containers.

As we become more broad-based, our future is limitless.

Mark Hillis, CEO and President of Molok North America:

I want to see Molok North America grow sustainably, quickly, and aggressively. And we’ve been experiencing that for a number of years now.

Anywhere you plant a Molok container, they just multiply from there. Because people see very quickly the concept of Molok, and the advantages that it brings to the end user.

So everywhere we’ve established a market in Canada, it’s grown considerably from there.

There’s no limit to what we can do.

Mona Hillis, co-owner of Molok North America:

Molok meant a lot to my mom; and she really wanted to build a company that educated everyone, and brought environmental consciousness to the everyday person in a positive and simple way.

As a young person, this generation; it’s kind of up to us to keep the world going. I feel it’s a social responsibility to take care of our planet, and give to it what we want back from it. And it’s easier to do than people think.

That’s what I want for Molok.

The future of waste handling: Doing what’s right (3 of 4)

Posted on 06/24/201906/25/2019 by The New Economy

This is the third part in our video series with Molok North America, exploring the waste management challenges faced by the US and Canada, and one of the technological solutions to make recycling and composting more convenient and efficient. If you want to start from the beginning, watch part one of The future of waste handling: In a perfect world.

Tim Corcoran, Vice President of Business Development for Molok North America:

When Molok launched 27 years ago, it was with a view to change the way the individual interacts with waste, to encourage better diversion, to encourage more use. To make sure that as we as individuals interact with a waste container, it’s a better experience. It’s not something that’s dirty, it’s not smelly, the lid lifts easily; you’re likely to do what it’s asking you to do. Which is separating our organics from our waste, and separating our recycling from both of those two. People tend to do what’s right.

Brian Page, Vice President of Municipal Affairs for Molok North America:

The beauty of the Molok container was that we could always find a space for it, without having to redesign the whole project.

Narrator:

For 34 years, Brian Page was the Supervisor of Site Development for the City of Kitchener. Any development project subject to planning review –multi-residential, industrial, commercial or institutional – went through him and his team.

Brian Page, Vice President of Municipal Affairs for Molok North America:

One of the problems that we had with site development: architects or developers, the last thing they thought about was where they’re going to contain their waste and recycling. And they had to try and fit it in on site. They’d actually even come to the site development meetings and had totally forgotten. I’d say you know, ‘Where’s your waste and recycling?’ and their jaw would just drop.

So, when Molok came along, and when I first found out about it, it was basically a godsend, because it only used five percent of the space in comparison to putting up a building and putting in a front load container.

And once the development industry learned that not only it used less space, it was less expensive to install. It also saved them money in the number of pickups that they were going to have to do, because it self-compacts and holds more.

So it was a total win for us, and for the development industry. And from the end user’s perspective, they had less number of pickups so they were paying less for their garbage pickup. And it allowed us also to be more creative on where we could put the waste and recycling containers; we could make them very handy to the back door, instead of putting them in a back corner.

So again: it’s a win win win by using these containers.

Narrator:

Molok believes that making its containers convenient, accessible, and attractive is the best way to encourage better waste diversion, and so promote environmental sustainability.

And to make sure the Molok containers are as sustainable as they can be, the company has partnered with the Earth Rangers, a children’s conservation organisation, which runs a centre for sustainable technology in Vaughan, Ontario.

Gavin Yeung, Manager, Earth Rangers Centre:

So the Earth Rangers Centre is really a hub for a lot of new technologies that are not so prevalent in the commercial office sector.

We have geothermal systems, we have solar photovoltaic trackers that track the sun. We also have earth tubes, which harness the constant temperatures in the earth.

Molok is a building sponsor of ours, they’re one of the many technologies we exhibit at the Earth Rangers Centre. We have three Moloks: one for waste, one for recycling, and one for organics.

Julian Tersigni, Facility Manager, Earth Rangers:

The Molok bins are fantastic because a big thing for us is capacity. These guys behind us are 6.5 cubic yards each, with a very little footprint. Because they go five feet into the ground.

Previously we had a four cubic yard bin – two of those – in a conditioned room. The problem with that is that it takes up valuable real estate inside of our building, and it takes up energy.

Our previous bins were collected weekly because of the smaller volume. These bins are collected every two weeks: less pickups means less emissions from the trucks, which is what we stand for.

Gavin Yeung, Manager, Earth Rangers Centre:

We’re doing a study for Molok North America right now.

We’ve put temperature sensors into the Molok bins, to measure how constant are the temperatures year-round in the Molok container. And as well we measure the odours coming from it. So we have odour meters that measure certain particulates that are known to produce odours.

The more constant we can keep the temperature, especially during the summer months, the less often we have to pick up, due to decomposition of the organics especially.

During the winter months, you don’t want especially organic materials to freeze. If it freezes, it gets stuck, and then you don’t have a full pick-up: it ends up being in there until the summer.

The Molok container really keeps a constant temperature at the very bottom of the bin especially: around about 12 to 14 degrees Celsius. At most times it is actually cooler than our conditioned waste room.

And there are no odours emanating from directly outside the Molok that we’ve found from any test that we’ve done so far. So it doesn’t attract the pests a normal bin would that’s sat outside.

Narrator:

Back at its Mount Forest headquarters, the Molok team is working every day to make sure that the 27 year old innovation is keeping up with the expectations of modern users and businesses.

Gary McLean, Fabrication and R&D Manager for Molok North America:

The main product itself really hasn’t changed a lot. The idea and the concept of Molok – being the semi-underground waste containment – is solid. We don’t need to change the actual idea of the product.

So we just constantly are looking at improving, simplifying. Looking to evolve the components that are related to the product, and just make the whole thing better for the user.

Scott Kuglin, Production Manager for Molok North America:

We use a lot of recycled material, as well as a lot of raw material, which then is recyclable. Over 90 percent of our material is recyclable, so it can be re-used in our own production, or recycled and used for future things down the road.

Over the years we’ve increased the amount of recycled materials we use, as well as always looking for new materials that are recyclable or recycled to use in our product, so that we’re always improving environmentally.

Gary McLean, Fabrication and R&D Manager for Molok North America:

You can never develop a good product without really good people behind it.

At the end of the day, R&D has to be a collaboration of everyone’s thoughts. And the team here at Molok is good because we have awesome people at the top that understand the need for developing products. Then you have the production side of things: those guys are spectacular, you know. And then we have our sales staff that always look for the need of the customer, need of the end user.

And then we take everything for our production side, what is actually feasible, what works best. It takes all those team members to actually make that ideal product, that works best for everybody.

Narrator:

As Molok North America looks forward to another 20 years, the world is under more pressure than ever before to up its sustainability game. If we’re to stand a chance of slowing the effects of climate change, we all need to take action – every day – to make the world a better place.

Watch part four of The future of waste handling: A better place.

The future of waste handling: A vision, a drive, a dream (2 of 4)

Posted on 06/24/201906/25/2019 by The New Economy

This is the second part in our video series with Molok North America, exploring the waste management challenges faced by the US and Canada, and one of the technological solutions to make recycling and composting more convenient and efficient. If you want to start from the beginning, watch part one of The future of waste handling: In a perfect world.

Mark Hillis, CEO and President of Molok North America:

Sustainability from Molok’s perspective is…

You know our founder Marja used to say: ‘What are we trying to do? What’s our purpose?’ And our purpose is to change the world, and make it a better place.

When you think about sustainability in the forefront of those thoughts, it becomes really important from a social conscience perspective of our company, that we’re doing something that is important to us, important to the residents throughout the world, and important to the world itself.

Mark Hillis, CEO and President of Molok North America:

So Molok was founded by a gentleman in Finland, whose name is Veikko Salli. And Veikko was a mechanical engineer turned entrepreneur who was very good at building things. And subsequently was involved with building a bunch of hotels, sports centres, restaurants, that type of thing, through Scandinavia.

One day he was challenged – as the story goes – by the appearance of garbage in one of his hotel sites in Finland. And he got to thinking about that, and I think with the help of his wife Anja they came up with the concept of going semi-underground with the garbage. Which brought a whole host of advantages to it: from the scope of space-saving, aesthetics, animals, odours; all that type of thing.

Narrator:

In 1991, Veikko – together with his daughter, Marja – turned the semi-underground waste concept into a business. In the first two weeks the company sold 40 containers to the local road administration – before it had even produced a working model. They named the company Molok, after the mythical god with a mouth like a bottomless pit.

Mark Hillis, CEO and President of Molok North America:

At some point the concept of coming to North America with the Molok model, came into view. And I wasn’t part of the family at that point – but in discussion with Marja and Veikko it was decided that Marja would come over here to Canada.

And she did that with a one year old daughter, as a single mother. Started this company up, and just had so much drive to make things happen with it.

And it takes a certain character and a certain personality and a certain drive to be able to do that.

Finnish people – as I’ve learned, being married to one for that many years, and being many times in Finland – are driven by something that they call Sisu. The easiest way to describe it is a stubborn determination against all odds. And Marja I think accentuated the word and the concept of Sisu very strongly. And failure was nothing that ever came into her mind.

Mona Hillis, co-owner of Molok North America:

Well, it was like her baby. It was a part of her life for so long. And it was the whole reason her and I came to Canada; or a big part of the reason, I guess.

She started with just this little tiny office in her closet in Mississauga, and now it’s this huge company doing these amazing things. And it was just, it was really important to her. As a woman and a business leader, and an environmentalist. It was a huge vision.

Narrator:

Marja ran Molok North America until March 2018, when she passed away. Her daughter, Mona, now co-owns the company; along with Marja’s husband Mark, who stepped up from VP of Operations to take over as President.

In 2019 Molok North America will be marking 20 years of operation – and one year since its founder’s death. But it’s clear that Marja’s vision for the company lives on.

Mona Hillis, co-owner of Molok North America:

She always did things sometimes in an unusual way, that you kind of thought, well that’s not so conventional! But it always ended up working out. And I’d see that in every aspect of her life, too. She didn’t like the trodden path so much, and she kind of just did what she wanted. And she got that from her dad too; he’s the exact same way.

She taught me independence, and to really stand for what you believe in. She taught me the value of stubbornness – she was very stubborn in her ways, yet very open minded as well. So I think I’ve gotten a lot of her personality traits, which I’m super grateful for. Because she was so loved. And still is.

Mark Hillis, CEO and President of Molok North America:

So, the vision, the drive, the dream, the passion that she had for Molok, and for how she wanted it to change the world, really came into play throughout her leadership in this company. And it’s her drive, and her leadership, that set the stage for how we think as a global company, and the success that we’ve had.

Tim Corcoran, Vice President of Business Development for Molok North America:

I believe our reputation in the industry is one of a leader, one of creativity. In some industries they view companies as ‘disruptors,’ you know? It seems to be in the internet of things, every business is a disruptor.

We were a disruptor 27 years ago, and we continue to disrupt the industry. We’re changing the way the individual views containment systems; the way architects, developers, and the service companies do business.

Mark Hillis, CEO and President of Molok North America:

The traditional waste model in North America, and particularly in Canada where we have most of our experience, if you consider it in the sense of a triangle: where the waste collection companies, the experts in the industry, are at the top; the municipalities which govern waste collection are kind of in the middle of the triangle; and the people, the residents, are at the bottom of the triangle.

The municipalities look upward to the waste collection companies on how things should go with regards to waste collection, recycling, organics, diversion, that type of thing. Then they push it down to their residents.

We’ve been fortunate enough to take that triangle and turn it upside down. We’re putting the people, the end users, the people who use Molok containers at the top. They’re the decision makers, they’re the people who use the system that want to get the most out of it.

And they’re driving that downward through the municipalities into the big waste companies in North America. And that’s been really successful for us. Because that’s the voice. That’s the voice of the people.

And the people are educated. They understand what’s going on in the world today from a sustainability perspective. They have a vision for what future they would like their children, and their grandchildren, to see. And that fits very well with the concept of Molok.

Narrator:

Today, Molok North America has installations in Canada from Halifax to Vancouver. It’s also established containers in key US cities, and has launched a distribution partnership in Mexico.

Where one Molok container pops up, others quickly follow. Because from the user, to the property developer, to the city – the advantages of the Molok container are immediately obvious.

Watch part three of The future of waste handling: Doing what’s right.

The future of waste handling: In a perfect world (1 of 4)

Posted on 06/24/201906/25/2019 by The New Economy

Every year the world produces over two billion tonnes of waste. By 2050, the World Bank expects that will grow to 3.4 billion tonnes.

But the problem isn’t just the amount – it’s what we do with it. Instead of recycling or reusing valuable materials, or turning them into compost, or energy – today, nearly three quarters of the world’s waste goes straight to landfill sites or open dumps.

Molok North America is a waste management company that offers convenience and efficiency to consumers and municipalities seeking to improve the diversion of their waste into recycling and composting streams. The New Economy partnered with Molok North America to find out how, in this four part video series.

Kinsley, Grade 4:

We recycle pop cans, plastic water bottles. Containers; paper and boxes.

Emma, Grade 6:

There’s stuff, and we only have so much of it. And it’s a good thing that we reuse it, because there’s only so much of it.

Jeremy, Grade 11:

When you throw something away that doesn’t need to be thrown away, it not only takes up extra space in landfills, but it also makes us need more resources to replace that product that was just thrown away.

Ainsley, Grade 12:

If stuff keeps going to the landfill then we’re not going to have a place to live. The landfills will overtake, in the long run.

Jared, Grade 11:

I think that the natural resources are still there, but it’s in decline. We need to find a way to either stop using those resources, or reuse them so that we’re not using more of them.

Olivia, Grade 8:

Perfect world, we wouldn’t have to throw away anything. Everything would either be biodegradable or recyclable. Because right now there’s a lot of things that you can’t recycle. Like, you don’t really have much of a choice in the matter of how much damage you’re dealing to the planet at that point.

Kinsley, Grade 4:

So like, we have to recycle. Because we can’t keep on throwing it in garbage, else we’ll run out of things that we can use again.

Narrator:

Every year the world produces over two billion tonnes of waste. By 2050, the World Bank expects that will grow to 3.4 billion tonnes.

But the problem isn’t just the amount. It’s what we do with it. Instead of recycling or reusing valuable materials, or turning them into compost, or energy – today, nearly three quarters of the world’s waste goes straight to landfill sites or open dumps.

Susan Antler, Executive Director, Compost Council of Canada

Well in the perfect world there would be no waste. It would be all resources that we would lovingly collect and put back to be reused.

In a more practical world, we need to have a different perspective on things. Quite honestly I don’t think we’ve done enough. I’m quite embarrassed about the fact that we have not owned up to our responsibilities of people on this planet.

For me personally, I have such an urgency right now. If we don’t change the respect that we need to have for the materials that we use, we basically are not doing what is right.

Narrator:

Changing the way we produce, consume, and dispose of goods is one of the UN’s sustainable development goals.

By 2030, we need to substantially reduce the amount of waste we generate: through prevention, reduction, recycling and reuse.

And countries in North America – home to five percent of the world’s population, but creating 14 percent of the world’s waste – have a lot of work to do.

Brent Wootton PhD, Vice President of Applied Research, Fleming College:

Well, Canada currently produces about 700-730kg of waste per person per year. And that’s a per capita statistic, including commercial waste. But that’s a very high number compared to other nations in the world. In OECD surveys we rank typically last, among those nations.

We need better dissemination of best practices, best tools, incentives. We need to do better at measuring things, we need to do better at implementing some of these programmes, such as food waste diversion, recycling, and textiles.

But because we’re a confederation, we lack a coordinated approach. What would be really helpful is if we had a national government response to some of these waste management challenges.

Bryan Staley, President and CEO, Environmental Research and Education Foundation:

Many discarded materials in North America are placed into the wrong bins by consumers. This tends to happen because in many cases there’s confusion due to poor labelling practices, inconsistencies in the types of materials accepted, and a lack of standardisation in definitions of management practices.

Contamination – materials which are not supposed to be in a particular waste stream – they impede successful management. Contamination reduces the quality of the end product, and it’s a significant issue for recycling and composting waste streams.

Susan Antler, Compost Council of Canada:

One of the biggest barriers is convenience. Pretty much now as Canadians, we all know what we should be doing. But the reality is, as soon as it goes away from convenience, people drop off. And they have great excuses.

And so a company such as Molok that has provided the convenience to do the right thing in terms of recycling and composting, is appropriate this time. Because we have to get beyond the barriers of why they can’t do it, and we have to make everything happen.

Narrator:

Molok is a waste management company, founded in Finland in 1991. The business invented the deep collection method of handling waste: each surface container conceals a cavity up to five feet deep, keeping refuse hidden and hygienic. And because a Molok container can hold more waste for longer – it’s a more sustainable solution.

In 1999 the brand crossed the Atlantic and established Molok North America. And from its headquarters in Mount Forest, Ontario, it’s set itself the goal of making the world a better place.

Mark Hillis, CEO and President of Molok North America:

Sustainability; it’s become something that a lot of people in the world are striving for, because we recognise what’s going on with the world these days. Molok was really at the forefront of that, probably way before it actually became something that was in everybody’s eyes.

As a result of that, everything that we do within the company: our manufacturing, our assembling, the team that we built, our human resources.

Everything we do lends itself towards making the world a better place, and therefore sustainability is in the forefront of what we do.

Tim Corcoran, Vice President of Business Development for Molok North America:

27 years ago when the business was established, one of the tenets of our original business was to make sure that everything we did respected the environment going forward.

So to this day, whether it’s the manufacture of our products, the way in which we sell them, we do everything with a view of bettering the environment. Whether it’s through reduced truck traffic, or whether it’s through the ability to recycle our products after use.

Narrator:

The Molok system is designed to make managing waste as simple and sustainable as possible – for the end user, the local municipality, and the waste collection company. To understand why this green thinking is so deeply embedded in the company’s philosophy, you have to go back to its origins: in a trash-strewn alleyway outside a Finnish hotel.

Watch part two of The future of waste handling: A vision, a drive, a dream.

How Wimbledon scales up instantly with IBM Cloud

Posted on 06/05/201906/21/2019 by The New Economy

The Championships at Wimbledon is the oldest tennis tournament in the world. While its brand remains traditional, it’s also known as an early adopter of technological innovations that connect the sport, media, and its relationships with fans. Bill Jinks and Karen Dewar discuss how the Championships use IBM’s Hybrid Cloud services, AI capabilities, and security products.

Learn more about IBM’s secure cloud solutions.

Karen Dewar: Bill Jinks is the IT Director at Wimbledon. So, Bill: Wimbledon is this amazing global sporting event and brand, but I’ve also heard it referred to as a data-driven media business. How do these two things co-exist?

Bill Jinks: Yeah, so: we’ve recognised that we can’t just be a sporting event. We are on a global stage, and it’s really important for us to act like that. We need to own our own content, own our audience. Own the data that we drive. So more and more we have to behave like a media organisation in those ways. And they co-exist nicely. The sporting event’s really important to us, but by those things we can actually get more value out of it.

Karen Dewar: Wimbledon has been using IBM’s hybrid cloud capabilities for some years now; can you tell me why that’s important from a business perspective, and how it’s keeping you competitive?

Bill Jinks: Yeah, obviously year-round we’re actually quite a small business. But then for the Championships we have to…

Karen Dewar: There’s a massive explosion.

Bill Jinks: It’s a massive explosion! We have to scale for millions of people who are going to watch the event on the digital platforms. And cloud allows us to scale up for that audience. It also provides the security, the availability, and gives us the confidence that it won’t go wrong during the two weeks of the year when all eyes are on Wimbledon.

Karen Dewar: So, Wimbledon is this fabulous traditional brand, but you also have a really good reputation in terms of being highly innovative. Can you talk a little bit about how you’re using AI in terms of connecting with your fans on a very, sort of, real and personal sense?

Bill Jinks: Increasingly fans want to engage in a conversational style on their social platforms. So we’ve used IBM’s AI within Facebook Messenger to create a chat interface, which allows fans to follow their favourite players, to get match information. And then they can ask further questions to get more information and insight about the Championships.

Karen Dewar: So for such a prestigious event, security must be a huge focus. So can you tell us how Watson Cyber Security has helped you in this regard?

Bill Jinks: Information security is a significant concern. And we’ve been very lucky that IBM’s security products have helped protect wimbledon.com for many years. But the threat landscape and the exploits that are coming along are ever increasing. And the amount of information you’re getting from your security infrastructure is becoming almost more than your security teams can deal with.

So I like to see Watson Cyber Security as an additional member of our team. It’s analysing all of that data, and it’s providing the security team with insight they need to help protect wimbledon.com

Karen Dewar: Bill, thank you very much for your time today, really appreciate it.

Bill Jinks: Thank you.

How IBM Cloud helps Royal Mail Group deliver faster, efficient services

Posted on 06/05/201906/21/2019 by The New Economy

The UK’s Royal Mail Group is one of the oldest mail carriers in the world – pre-dated only by the mail services of Portugal, and of the Roman Empire. The modern Royal Mail, explains Martin Moore, has been innovating with cloud for some time – exposing its APIs in a controlled and secure way, and helping the business understand its customers’ needs. Martin and Karen Dewar discuss the competitive advantages that IBM Cloud brings to Royal Mail Group.

Learn how to move your business applications to the IBM Cloud.

Karen Dewar: Martin Moore is Platforms Delivery Director for Royal Mail Group; one of the oldest mail carriers in the world. What some people might not know is that certainly from an IBM perspective, we consider you as really an innovator in your use of cloud technologies to drive competitive advantage into your business. So, tell us a little bit more about your use of cloud-based technologies.

Martin Moore: So at Royal Mail we’ve been innovating with cloud for quite a while now. We started off with the IBM private cloud; and that’s where we implemented our API Connect platform. You know, the key driver for that was to expose our APIs in a secure way out to our customers. And that went tremendously well. It took us about three months from inception through to the actual final delivery of the project.

That now exposes our APIs in a much more easily controlled way. We get analytics, we get data, from all those interactions. Even down to what customers are making what sort of enquiries. So we can really start to understand our customers’ needs.

And due to the success of that, we’ve actually moved from the public cloud now to a dedicated IBM Cloud platform. And that’s really enabled us to ensure that we’ve got a highly scalable solution as our APIs really take off. And – yeah – it’s a really good foundation for the future.

Karen Dewar: Brilliant! How are you seeing the cloud bringing you some competitive advantage? Because I guess the speed is one of the key aspects of that.

Martin Moore: The speed is the key thing. That’s why there’s a cloud first strategy now. And I think we need to innovate more, we need to fail fast, as other people do. We need to just get out there and just try things. So, we’ve changed our ways of working.

And the benefit of that is, we’re now able to on-board our customers in a handful of hours or days, instead of what used to take weeks or months. And the way that we on-board them is now far more secure and modern; so our customers are happier, we’re happier, and – you know, it just works really, really well.

Karen Dewar: Fabulous, and: what does the future hold for Royal Mail Group? What do you see as the sort of, challenges, and maybe advantages, of adopting a multi-cloud strategy?

Martin Moore: For me, the key thing is about laying down the foundations of how you govern and manage your multi-cloud environment from day one. You need to consciously decide what processing powers you need to run where. Different clouds will give you different advantages in different places.

But coupled with that, we need to ensure that our traditional, sort of, hub-and-spoke integration method, is modernised. And we need to have more of a federated integration service. And be cloud agnostic.

Karen Dewar: Thanks Martin.

Martin Moore: Okay! Thanks Karen.

Karantis360 and IBM Cloud: Helping people in care live at home for longer

Posted on 06/05/201906/21/2019 by The New Economy

Karantis360 is an innovative health tech business using smart technologies to transform the care industry. Using IBM Cloud, Karantis360 is combining the Internet of Things (IoT), sensors, artificial intelligence and machine learning to help in-care people live at home longer—while giving their families greater peace of mind. Helen Dempster and Karen Dewar discuss how the solution works, why the business moved to the IBM Cloud platform, and Karantis360’s hopes for the future.

Learn more about IBM’s data and AI solutions.

Karen Dewar: Helen Dempster is Chief Visionary Officer at Karantis360; so Helen I understand you’ve developed this solution that is disrupting and transforming the care industry through the use of smart technologies. Things like internet of things, sensors, AI, and also machine learning. So can you tell us a little bit more about your solution?

Helen Dempster: What we’ve done is, we’ve taken – as you say – IoT and AI, and created a solution that will help people in their own homes and stay there for longer.

And AI is used to create patterns. If there is an issue that deviates from the learned behaviour pattern, it will push out an alert to the – either care provider or the family member – who’s overseeing the care. That will then give the individual overseeing the care the time to be able to manage that properly. And it’s instantaneous.

Karen Dewar: Wonderful, so: you’re a cloud-native company, but you weren’t born on the IBM Cloud, you moved to us. Tell us a little bit about that decision process.

Helen Dempster: So initially we were born on Microsoft Azure. We opted back in December 2017 to migrate across to IBM.

Security is a huge issue for us – especially given the industry we’re in. IBM’s a very well known name, a very well known brand, and one that people trust. So the security that IBM offer as a brand was amazing for us.

Scalability – and instant scalability, for us – is key. IBM offered a huge range of AI capabilities to put into the system. And reliability. And those were our key factors.

Karen Dewar: Fabulous. And finally, what does the future hold for your solution? I mean, what do you envisage from a technology and a functionality perspective, going forward?

Helen Dempster: So for us, we’d like to see this go global. To utilise the data centres that IBM have globally around the world.

But the business is one of care, and care is key to our hearts. And giving transparency to families – whether they’re here, there, wherever they may be – is one of the key components to this.

So the technology is based on a mobile platform. That will give family members key sight as to what’s going on inside the family home. And equally, using IBM as a brand name to propel us is one that we could only have dreamed of in December 2017.

Karen Dewar: Brilliant. Helen, thank you so much for your time today.

Helen Dempster: Thank you.

Electric vehicles are coming – but the lithium must come from somewhere

Posted on 11/12/201803/11/2019 by The New Economy

European cities are clamouring for electric vehicles to reduce pollution from congestion – but investment in car and battery manufacturers isn’t reaching the mining industry, says NeoLithium’s Gabriel Pindar. He doesn’t believe industry reports that the lithium market is going to be oversupplied, because the lithium has to come from somewhere, and the resources that we’ve found are the only significant ones that exist. In the first half of this interview he talks about NeoLithium’s Tres Quebradas project and its potential.

The New Economy: Tell me more about the market for lithium; where are you seeing the most demand?

Gabriel Pindar: At the moment, China is driving the demand, and is driving the production. So, the Chinese government: it’s trying to cut reliance on fossil fuels, it’s trying to cut pollution, and they have a lot more density. So they have a big incentive to do that: 50 million people living in Shanghai and Beijing, it’s a lot of people. So they do have a real incentive to get on board with electric vehicles.

The next place – if you can imagine – would be Europe! Because European cities are also very congested. In the inner part of the city they don’t want to have any more diesel engines, they don’t want to have as many petrol engines. So, they want to have as many electric vehicles as possible.

That is what is driving this. While the industry has been quite slow, the councils and the different regulating bodies have been more aggressive. And they’re proposing legislation that is actually mandating by when we will have electric vehicles.

So, there’s no way out! We are going to have electric vehicles.

The New Economy: Is the lithium supply there to meet that deadline?

Gabriel Pindar: No: I think the automotive industry has been slow to react. They’re supporting the battery manufacturers, but the battery manufacturers are too busy growing themselves. They have to increase their capacities by five times, 10 times.

Now, the mining industry is not being supported by any of the two. There are very few deals coming from battery manufacturers or car manufacturers supporting the mining industry. So, the lithium has to come from somewhere! And I have to disagree with some of the reports that are believing that the market is going to be oversupplied – I don’t think it will be oversupplied. It is a lot more difficult to get a mine into production at the right quality, at the right scale, at the right production – than to get some of the other parts working.

The New Economy: Tell me about the challenges of that production: for example, you explained about the difference between deposits in Australia versus South America; does that present different challenges?

Gabriel Pindar: It does in a way. So, rock projects produce spodumene, which is a concentrate that they sell to China, and in China they reprocess it to produce hydroxide. And the hydroxide is what you actually use to produce a battery.

From the brine projects we produce lithium carbonate, and lithium carbonate also gets sold into China – the majority. A couple of other places are starting to produce now batteries out of lithium carbonate, but the majority gets produced out of China.

And of both products you have certain degrees of quality; so you can have technical grade, or you can have battery grade. So the more pure your product, the better pricing, the more you can sell it to different customers.

If not, you’re selling a product that is not finished, and your customer has to finish it. So, it’s slightly different, the mechanics of how Australia is working with the rock projects, and how much they’re producing internally; versus selling a raw material into China. And what South America’s doing with the brines, that is selling a more finished product when they sell lithium carbonate.

The New Economy: So by the time you’re into production, where do you see your product going? Will it be into China, or will the EU have caught up?

Gabriel Pindar: Difficult to say; that will be completed doing the feasibility. Our expectation is that Europe will also ramp up production. But at the moment it looks like 80 percent of the batteries will be produced out of China.

The New Economy: Gabriel, thank you very much.

Gabriel Pindar: Thank you very much Paul.

NeoLithium COO: Tres Quebradas project is ‘blessed with good chemistry’

Posted on 11/12/201811/12/2018 by The New Economy

NeoLithium’s Tres Quebradas project was discovered just two years ago. It’s one of the last significant discoveries in the market – and also has the lowest impurities. This, COO Gabriel Pindar explains, means that NeoLithium can forecast low cost opex to extract and refine the lithium that the automotive industry is increasingly demanding. In the second half of this interview he also talks about why China is the leading market for lithium, and the regulator-led push for electric vehicles.

The New Economy: Gabriel, how significant is the demand for lithium today?

Gabriel Pindar: Well, as you probably know, the automotive industry is undergoing a massive change. So, they are going from diesel and petrol engines to more efficient electrical vehicles.

On top of that actually, the energy market is also looking more into lithium batteries, as they act as a buffer for solar panels, solar generation or wind generation. If you use big lithium batteries like the ones they have installed in Adelaide, for example, in Australia; you don’t need diesel backup generation.

All of that is exacerbating how much the market will need lithium in the future.

The New Economy: And what’s the potential for NeoLithium’s 3Q project?

Gabriel Pindar: The project was only discovered two years ago. So, this is one of the last discoveries – significant discoveries – in the market. Since then we have done two drilling campaigns, and the resource has more than doubled in the second drilling campaign, that was finished only a couple of months ago.

The size of our resource at the moment makes it number three or four in the world. So, if you consider how much lithium you will need into the future, it becomes very significant.

Our project is blessed with a very good chemistry. In South America you have brines. So, brines means that you have lithium dissolved in salt water. Now you have certain impurities within that resource, and the more impurities you have in your resource, the more expensive your opex: the more expensive it gets to clean up.

We’re blessed with a very clean product to start with. Our project has the lowest impurities in the market. So we can forecast that we’re going to be one of the lowest-cost producers in the market. So that is very significant, particularly for the investors.

The New Economy: Chile and Argentina are rich in these lithium deposits; why haven’t they been fully explored?

Gabriel Pindar: I wouldn’t say they haven’t been explored. The majority of the significant resources have already been found.

What happens is that, there was not a requirement. The demand was not there. So, big companies like Albemarle and SQM had the Atacama region; and there were a couple of other producers around them, and that was enough. The world didn’t need anymore.

Now with the electrification that is coming, the world will need probably four or five times more than what they can produce.

But still, even though you can explore a lot, you’re not going to be able to find more significant resources. The resources that we have at the moment for brines are the ones that exist. There will be very few new resources of significant size in the future.

The New Economy: Which means we have to make as effective use of these resources as possible; what expertise is NeoLithium bringing to this challenge?

Gabriel Pindar: So, for a junior company we have a very large team. So we have almost 100 professionals working with us. From geologists to hydrogeologists, to processing engineers to chemical engineers.

Our team has been working together for the last three years; and it’s the team that actually found a previous deposit. So, this is a new deposit, it’s a better quality resource, it’s proven to be larger now. We think we have the right team to get it into production.

We have listed a public company, we have received very strong support from institutionals and private investors. We have completed our pilot ponds, and we are completing our pilot plant now. In the next four to six weeks it should be up and running.

The next steps will be to validate the process and go into full feasibility, with the expectation of starting construction next year.

We would like to be in production by 2021, ramping up in 2022.

The New Economy: Gabriel, thank you very much.

Gabriel Pindar: Thank you very much Paul.

ProInversión: Social sustainability is central to Peru’s PPP projects

Posted on 07/16/201807/16/2018 by The New Economy

ProInversión is Peru’s private investment promotion agency. It recently completed an international roadshow promoting a portfolio of 50 public private partnership projects, to help plug Peru’s $160bn infrastructure gap. In the third part of our video roadshow, Executive Director Alberto Ñecco Tello explains how ProInversión embeds sustainability into its projects and partner relationships – and how the PPP infrastructure projects planned will help Peru sustain or exceed its recent five percent annual GDP growth. The roadshow started at World Finance with Peru’s macro outlook, and continued on European CEO with a breakdown of ProInversión’s PPP portfolio.

The New Economy: Peru enjoyed five percent average growth from 2000-2016; what does the country need to sustain this development?

Alberto Ñecco Tello: Firstly I believe we need to keep doing what we have been doing, which is being very constant and committed to our macroeconomic policies, keeping an open market, keeping a friendly environment for foreign investors. And also a very strict and disciplined fiscal stance.

Also we need to further develop our infrastructure in Peru. That will help reduce transaction costs and logistic costs, and therefore increase productivity. In that sense we will be able not only to sustain, but actually even grow at a faster rate.

The New Economy: Now give me some examples of how you’re embedding sustainability into your projects.

Alberto Ñecco Tello: We’re doing that through two initiatives. We are really focused on bringing much more prepared and complex structures to the market, that really serve the market needs. We pay really close attention to what the market is looking for; we keep an open dialogue with investors to know exactly what kind of structures we need to bring to the market that will attract investors and bidders.

All of our projects are worked with a team of external advisors, and what we found about a year ago is that in time we had lost our capacity to attract the best advisors in the market – mostly because we didn’t pay much attention to the rules and the regulations around our contracting procedures. We have totally changed that; two months ago I obtained board approval for a new set of rules for contracting advisors, and now we have a much more market-friendly framework that will help us attract better advisors, and therefore also bring best practices to our portfolio and our structures. And also help train and bring knowledge to our teams. In that sense, better structures should help us have better sustainability.

That’s on the market side, but on the other side, we’re working very actively with the communities on the social side, so that we have a very clear – or at least, as clear as possible – read of what the actual sensitivity of the population in the communities affected by these projects. So that we can deal with them properly, or at least that we can make that information available to the bidders, so that they know what the actual situation is.

The New Economy: Social and environmental management as well is core to ProInversión’s mission, so how does that affect your work, and the way that you work with your partners?

Alberto Ñecco Tello: Well, it is central for us. We found that in many projects, most of the concerns for the investors coming into them was social acceptance. And, you know: what was the communities… how were the communities going to be affected by the projects?

So one of the things that we have done recently is that we have totally changed the way we’ve structured our transaction teams. And now every team has one member from our social team doing the groundwork from the beginning. Even before we actually go to the market. When we start just doing the preliminary work on a transaction, we have the social team involved with the communities, measuring the temperature around these projects, so that we know what could be the possible problems with it.

And that also comes with the environmental, because usually social and environmental kind of go hand in hand. Because environmental issues are the ones that mostly concern the communities.

So, one of the things that we’ve found is that around 95 percent of the issues with the communities come from the information asymmetries. So it’s not really that the projects per se will create a negative impact that would create social problems. But it’s mostly the lack of information and communication that leads to these situations.

So, having identified the problem, we are working very intensively on actually bringing this information, and having more acceptance, so projects are more sustainable in time.

The New Economy: What are investors looking for when they speak with you, and what are you looking for in your investors?

Alberto Ñecco Tello: Well, investors are looking for certainty, right? I mean they’re looking for stable frameworks, bankable contracts, and structures that will allow them to actually deliver the service and have the returns they are expecting. And I believe that’s fair – that’s what the market is there for!

What we expect from investors are a long-term commitment. I mean, PPP projects or asset-based projects like mining or concession, as I said: they’re long-term contracts, so they tend to be 20-30 years. And we need investors committed on delivering the services that are required for that period of time. Because at the end of the day, the main objective, the reason why we do this, is to deliver services and quality of life to the population.

The New Economy: Alberto, thank you very much.

Alberto Ñecco Tello: Thank you.

How cloud can help businesses experiment, innovate, and improve agility

Posted on 04/20/201806/11/2018 by The New Economy

Businesses are continually evolving to better serve their customers and stakeholders. Higher competition means an even faster pace of change. IBM’s David Curbishley says that no industry is immune to disruption, so investing in technology to drive innovation and differentiate your business is very important. Doing that on the public cloud is a lot easier than on-premise – and while the journey is to the public cloud, a hybrid cloud strategy is the best fit for many businesses today. Learn more at ibm.com/cloud/yourcloud.

David Curbishley: So, many businesses are looking at the cloud to help them transform and drive innovation more quickly.

No industry is immune to disruption, so getting those differentiated capabilities out quickly is very important.

Doing that on premise is hard; doing it in the cloud is a lot easier. People can experiment more easily, they can get access to new technologies. And they can learn very quickly – and they can fail quickly, too. So, failure’s okay, but you need to fail quickly and move on. So, not spend several years developing something, put it in the market place, and find out that the opportunity you were looking for has moved on.

And equally out there you can get access to new technologies that you wouldn’t have on premise. AI, machine learning, deep analytics. And you can use those to embed new capabilities into applications, and use those applications in new ways and innovative front ends to applications.

The New Economy: The common wisdom is to do all of this experimentation on the public cloud, to move as many workloads as possible there. Is that the trend you’re seeing?

David Curbishley: The journey is to the public cloud, there’s no doubt about that. But it should exist today as a pillar of a hybrid strategy. Some businesses I work with – typically large enterprise organisations, financial services, and people like that – they still have certain workloads which are best placed in their own data centres or in co-hosted data centres. Primarily for legacy reasons or latency requirements or data privacy requirements. And they’re not quite ready to put all of that stuff in the public cloud.

And I think very much it’s a workload conversation that needs to be taking place. You need to understand the characteristics of the workload and decide to place it where it most makes sense for speed, agility, cost, and all those sorts of things.

Business innovation comes from the business’s understanding the challenge they want to solve
and the outcome they want to drive.

Public cloud is a big part of that, but it’s not the final answer yet today.

The New Economy: For businesses that understand they’re on a journey, how can they make sure that the work they’re doing today is still going to be relevant in the future?

David Curbishley: So they can start to build cloud native applications. And by cloud native I mean, small things like micro-services, they’re very small, discrete pieces of work, they’re built in a continuous delivery type of model, they are disjoint from understanding the infrastructure underneath them, so they’re readily portable. And they’ll then start to lead to a whole, completely new culture in the way that you develop and deliver applications to marketplace. And maintain them over time. So, these things can be more easily updated and moved forward in that respect.

They need to embrace open standards, to start having flexible architectures. By having flexible architectures, taking the cloud as one piece of the overall story, they can start to decide where the placement needs to be for the right workloads.

Vendors have a place to play in that conversation too; you know, we have a responsibility to embrace open standards, embrace open initiatives. Things like the open container initiative. So we can help people decide what their ideal placement for their workload is.

That said, data is a key part of understanding any business. And the volumes of data we see now in the business is growing exponentially. So investing in machine learning, deep analytics, artificial intelligence technologies – which are all available in the cloud – will allow companies to understand the insights behind those data, and start making better business decisions, or driving better business performance.

Opening up that data too – in terms of APIs that they can put out, and expose either internally for people to access, or externally – they can start to build into ecosystems. So many CEOs now I’m seeing are more receptive to opening up those APIs, opening up part of their business, and working as part of an ecosystem to drive innovation forward; rather than just sort of trying to go their own way.

The New Economy: David, thank you very much.

David Curbishley: Thank you.