Greening the “grey” &“Sustaining the way”

Abstract

Insee Cement Lanka is a fully owned subsidiary of Siam City Cement Company, Thailand and it was called Holcim (Lanka) Ltd before it was acquired by Siam City Cement. Insee cement is the only integrated (go through the fully manufacturing process converting limestone into cement) cement manufacturer in Sri Lanka. Sri Lankan cement market is highly commoditized and mainly driven by price. There are more than 27 cement brands in the Island, including five main “Branded” players and all others are low priced economy versions. In late 90s company strategically understood the future threats expected from these economy players as the company started losing share for low end brands. As a multinational, Insee always wanted to maintain its “premium-ness” as a leading brand in the market specially in terms of quality and pricing.Cement as a product has so many limitations in brand differentiation. Technical benefits which are used by most cement manufactures are common to almost all cements and everyone tried being differentiated highlighting some of those and customers are confused. Insee brands were always above all brands including its main competitors i:e Tokyo cement and Ultratec cement. When local and international players started to gain the share from the market, Insee (previously known as Holcim) wanted to deploy an enduring strategy to hold and gain share in the long run. The approach was two-folded, one was to have short and midterm plans forfeited with traditional marketing activities. Second approach was to introduce Sustainability Marketing which is also called Green Marketing which can drive the brand in the long run. Cement production process produces lot of emissions to the environment and its contribution to global carbon dioxide (CO2) emission is 5%. Manufacturing of cement utilizes substantial amounts of energy via coal thermal power and electricity. Main raw material used for cement production is limestone and it is heated under very high temperatures to convert limestone into cement. Carbon dioxide is mainly produced in two occasions, one is during the limestone conversion and the second occasion is burning coal to generate heat. Excavation of limestone too contributes to some environmental complications. “Sustainability development” is considered as the development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to fulfill their own needs.“Traditional Marketing” activities will make adequate profits for the manufacturer and create consumer satisfaction. However, that approach will not certainly look at long term impacts to the environment and society. “Sustainability marketing” is a new notion in marketing and business, but it is promising to become the game changer. Based on theories of social sustainability, Sustainability marketing seeks to meet the needs of this generation without compromising the future.In late 90s Insee (then known as Holcim Lanka) adopted Sustainability Marketing replacing their “Sanstha” cement formula with a new environmentally friendly blend which is called Portland Limestone cement (PLC). This green product produces substantially low amount of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere and consumes less water in construction process while offering all other technical requirements which cement must produce. More than reducing emissions, green cements consumes certain industrial waste material and at the same time improve the longevity of the limestone reserves as it consumes less limestone. This was nominated as Sri Lanka`s first and only Green Labeled cement. Recently Insee introduced two more sustainable green products called Insee Rapid Flow Plus and Insee Mahaweli Marine Plus. With all these products, Insee drives the Sri Lankan cement market towards the green direction, where the company can easily out beat competition and gain share. It will be extremely difficult for their competitors to gain green status and Insee will use this massive competitive corporate advantage to be ahead of their main competitors. Along with that the Company launched a state-of-art sustainable initiative called Insee Ecocycle (known as Holcim Geocycle before the acquisition). This concept introduced professional waste management systems for industrial and hazardous waste and converted them as alternate fuel for heating the limestone in the cement kiln, where cement clinker is produced. This methodology reduces carbon dioxide emissions in comparison to traditional waste management processes and at the same time these materials will replace coal to a certain extend inside the kiln. This sustainable initiative made Insee cements much greener. Insee launched many programs to propagate the concept called “Green Building” or “Sustainable Construction”. These will help to reduce the global carbon footprint to a greater scale as lot of construction is going on in line with current rapid urbanization. The company started many projects to promote sustainable construction and usage of green products starting from construction craftsmen level to university professor level. Insee has many professional tie-ups with industry stakeholders to promote green construction. While activating all such green initiatives, Insee made sure to give more visibility to their green cements which are essential for sustainable constructions. The company uses key industry figures to introduce these products and concepts thus Insee is becoming one of most respected players in the industry. As the Company completely rehabilitates the escalated quarry and rescues all animals during the process, environmental impact is virtually zero. Not only in manufacturing but in inbound logistics too the Company uses creative sustainable avenues to minimize the carbon footprint to the environment. At the same time Insee in the mission of promoting other cement related building products, which will bring Insee image more greener and making an impact on sales. Marketing and Sustainable development departments of the company makes sure all such products and initiatives are professional communicated and marketed among and all stakeholder groups. There are three intentions behind Insee`s green marketing strategy, one is to position Insee products as green/sustainable product in order to generate some differentiation against competitors. We can define that as “generating Green Equity” around the Insee brand. Because no competitor has entered in to that market space yet and that will obviously create a unique competitive advantage in the medium and long run. Growing the green building market in order to get the highest share via their green products is the second objective in Insee`s Sustainability marketing strategy. The third objective, Insee capitalizes its green agenda to generate “Corporate Brand Equity” to position Insee as a superior socially responsible corporate brand. These help the company to achieve lot of corporate objectives and get lots of industry approvals to boost cement volumes. After all these efforts Insee maintains a very dominant position in the Sri Lankan cement market being the most high-priced cement. Through this Sustainability marketing strategy company is making sustainable construction a “must to have” with heavy stakeholder involvement. With this,Insee creates its future markets in which the Company has its ready-made green cement portfolio. While doing that, Insee never neglects even a single stakeholder group in the industry as they invest a lot to make contacts in all possible touch points with its green message. This approach is creating a huge barrier for competitors to conquer and makes an unbelievable competitive advantage and customer loyalty to promote Insee.