May Yap, Chairwoman, CEO and Managing Director at LHT Holdings, is a visionary with strong business acumen and entrepreneurship skills. Before this venture, May Yap worked in various roles as admin clerk, Executive Director, Sales Director and Managing Director.
In academics, May holds a Diploma in Sales and Marketing from the Marketing Institute of Singapore and has successfully completed the Operation Management Innovation (OMNI) programmer conducted by A*Star in 2011. She is also a member of the Singapore Institute of Director.
LHT Holdings Limited has been in the timber industry for more than 20 years. Established in 1977, LHT has grown to be a leader in the industry with an annual turnover of more than S$30,000,000 and is also one of the largest manufacturing companies of high-quality wooden pallets, boxes and crates in Singapore.
As part of its ongoing efforts to reduce waste and to protect the precious timber resources of the earth, LHT has established Singapore’s first wood wastes recycling plant equipped with a highly automated system from Germany to produce a series of Technical Wood products. With the high technology involved, the products have the advantage of being consistent in colour, texture and high density. Wood cracks, mould and insect attacks are prevented through a strict process of treatment and drying. The products are therefore ideal for furniture, building material and heavy-duty industrial usage.
Products & Services
A. Technical Wood, an engineered compressed wood made of original tropical hardwood fibres that undergo a high-pressure and high-temperature steaming process. A new wood that substitutes natural wood that is made from wood waste material.
B. The Innovative Process Product Conversion (IPPC) Pallets series is fast gaining a strong foothold in the arena of green products that are designed and produced to reduce carbon footprints. The pest-free pallets provide innovative packaging solutions that help customers reduce waste, thereby contributing to the reduction of carbon emissions.
C. ECR Leasing Pallet; the “Efficient Consumer Response or ECR is a strategy to improve consumer choice, satisfaction and service and at the same, reduce total costs, inventories and physical assets. ECR requires distributors and suppliers to focus jointly on the efficiency of the total grocery chain, rather than the efficiency of individual components”. A four-way 1M by 1.2M standard size conformed to the international standard ISO 6780 “General Purpose Flat Pallets for Through Transit of Goods Principle Dimensions & Tolerances”
D. Industrial Packing; by providing services and solutions to customer with large machinery, unique design shape that requires special care and the packaging that starts from a commercial sales point and arrives at the consumer as a sales unit, that is used to deliver goods from producer to consumer.
“We are always conscious of our role in the
conservation of natural resources”
E. RFID Technology; As a pioneer in RFID technology since 2006, the RFID pallets were mainly used on RFID ASRS warehouses and our own ECR pallet leasing. RFID is a technology tool and it’s not meant to eliminate or replace anyone. It creates a convenient and better job environment. It enhances your productivity by eliminating all unnecessary manpower wastage on information retrieval for customer’s verification documentation, providing accuracy, control and efficiency for your business. Enhance efficiency for right goods delivery to the right location, right condition, right customers and the right time.
F. Our green journey in recycling wood waste to Technical Wood and waste management. Technical Wood is the raw material and bio-products that used to make into furniture component for Greenflo Doors (fire-rated) and flooring strip.
G. Wood Plastic composite (WPC) is our new area in R&D that uses wood wastes and plastic wastes in combination to form or develop more greener products.
Daily Routine & Hobbies
“I usually wake up at 6.00 am to go for a neighbourhood breeze walk for an hour, after that I start my daily routine talking and playing with my two lovely pets. On week day I sleep early at about 12.00am, if it is weekend I sleep around 1 to 2 am. My hobbies are keeping pets, and gardening. I also love browsing YouTube to view certain positive thinking topics and brainstorming human behavior”, said May Yap.
Clientele & Hurdles on the Way
The 500 fortune companies or organisations in the Petrol Chemical, Pharmaceutical , Logistic /Supply Chain Management, warehouses, Electronics and Clean Tech sector are the key customers.
As a traditional wood pallet manufacturer, May Yap saw little changes in the timber industry over the years. But today the world has changed to Digital Technology Transformation where “pen & rulers” will be phasing out. At LHT, they face many challenges. Besides innovative products, they are facing new generation gaps where it is hard to find workers and staff entering timber trade. Fortunately, the government provides funds to cope with digital transformation. They took the opportunities to collaborate with A’STAR since 2009 – The Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) is a catalyst, enabler and convenor of significant research initiatives among the research community in Singapore and beyond.
The collaborated projects with ASTAR results proved of concept ensure the business ability towards long term products that transformed the market using a lower carbon footprint processed wood that was made from waste wood materials.
In 2018, LHT was awarded Climate Action Champion and EcoFriend Awards by NEA.
The use of this technology lowers waste disposal cost by a few hundred thousand dollars, saves 4,500 trees.
Corporate Social Responsibility
May Yap said, “We are always conscious of our role in the conservation of natural resources. Recycling is one of many efforts that reflect our commitment towards mitigating climate change and deforestation”.
LHT was established in 1977 and since then it has grown to be a leader in the industry. May Yap is the Chairwoman, CEO and Managing Director of the company and is taking it towards success.
“Our use of recycling technology lowers waste disposal cost by few hundred thousand dollars,
and saves 4,500 trees been cut annually”