Dynaglass Tapping Niche Technology to Grow Business

Excerpt from The Straits Times, 10 March 2007 By Taila Krishnakumar

If there is one businessman who is pleased with Singapore as a manufacturing base, it’s Stephen Seow, founder and managing director of Dynaglass Reinforced Plastic Pte Ltd.

With more than 30 years’ experience in the Fibre Reinforced Polyester (FRP) Composite technology business, Mr Seow believes his company is well-positioned to succeed in what he calls a unique and innovative niche business

And having Singapore behind him to facilitate the company’s exchange with international markets has helped the business evolve and diversify.

The company manufactures products which service a wide range of industries, including oil & gas, marine, aerospace, and defense. It also handles custom fabrication, production, and services such as maintenance and repairs to all FRP composite products.

Dynaglass’s sole manufacturing plant is located in Tuas, which also serves as its R&D base where product design, engineering calculations and prototyping moulds/tooling are done in-house. It has 45 workers on its rolls.

Mr Seow has very simple reason for why he founded his business. “I’m actually a person who likes to make things,” he said.

“All my life, I’ve been a handyman. I used to build model planes and boats. I came across this material (FRP), which is very versatile, and fell in love with it. I started to make things with it and I found its properties are so useful so much so that I kept on developing products with it. In fact, this love affair has lasted for the past 32 years, as Mr Seow reveals he has been using the material to solve problems form weight issues to corrosion. “It was a natural progression towards industries like oil and gas, where companies would consult us on basis manufacturing problems.

It began in 1971, when Mr Seow founded Dynamics Engineering, a small, four-man company. “I used to sweep my own floor, deliver my own products and did everything from scratch,: he reminisced.

By 1983, Dynaglass Reinforced Plastic Pte Ltd was incorporated as the marketing arm of Dynamics Engineering, dedicated to handling the business which has since grown beyond Singapore and the Southeast Asian markets. Today, 40 percent of company sales are derived from indirect exports, and the balance is accounted for by a varied local customer base. It counts Raffles Marina, Caltex Singapore and BP Singapore among its customers.

Mr Seow is not alone in his FRP endeavours. His daughters, Bernadette and Carolyn, have been with him since the early 1980s. Bernadette is the company’s finance and administration manager, while Carolyn is the engineering service manager.

For the moment, the company has no intention of moving its entire operations abroad, despite cheaper alternatives. “As we are mostly into R&D prototyping, and technology know-how transfer (as opposed to labour-intensive manufacturing operations), Singapore is an ideal place to base all our operations,” Mr Seow said.

For large production runs, it has established a low-cost manufacturing platform in China.

While the company declined to disclose sales figures, it said turnover falls between $4-$6 million. As Bernadette explained, considering the variable nature of the company’s products and services, what matters are margins. She said, “We have increases our margins and profitability, even through last year, and have managed to stay relevant while streamlining costs.

Its oil and gas business accounts for 70 per cent of total turnover, while its marine, defence and “other” segments make up the remaining 30 per cent.

“As many would have already known, ‘Rome was not built in a day’,” Mr Seow said. “It takes government foresight when developing ‘excellence’ in the area of logistics, global communication, financial institutions/infrastructure, education, and legislative policies.

More recently, he noted, a pro-business trend and approach by the Singapore government has emerged through the recession, enhancing Singapore’s case for manufacturing, One factor and probably the most appreciated one, Mr Seow said lies in Singapore’s user-friendly legislations which enable ease of imports and exports.

“Disadvantages only occur if you don’t know how to work around them,”he said. “In a place like Singapore, feedback on business is open, and action to make things right is only an email away. “Dynaglass” strength lies in its ability to design and fabricate a diverse range of highly innovative finished products to meet the unpredictable and vibrant changes of the local, regional and international markets,” Mr Seow added.

The company was the first to introduce FRP Composite as a structure engineering material to the Singapore market back in the early 70s, and has not looked back since. With each new product introduced in place of wood, fabric, aluminium, and other exotic alloys, the company aims to innovate and develop final products with properties that surpass those it is replacing.

Today, FRP products are widely accepted and are specified as standard material for the construction of covers, ducts, fans, dampers, gas scrubbers, chemical storage tanks, hand rails and floor gratings.