In his role as Lubmarine's Managing Director for Hong Kong and General Manager for the Asian Pacific Region, Robert Fenech shares his views on the opportunities and challenges ahead and how he is bringing his diverse global experiences and passion for developing strong customer proximity to his new role.
Can you tell us about your experience at TotalEnergies prior to taking up your role?
I am lucky enough to have undertaken a number of really interesting and challenging roles in different countries and in different aspects of the business including commercial and functional roles, health and safety, distribution and logistics and also in the investments and acquisition divisions.
In terms of different locations, I have worked in Zambia, Paris, Liberia and am now in Hong Kong for my new role which is really exciting.
That is an interesting and diverse number of places to live and work. What were some of the key take-aways from your time in those locations?
Certainly, when you work in Paris you really get an appreciation of the sheer size of TotalEnergies. It was something that really struck me during my time there and how everyone individually plays an important role in what is a huge organization.
Working in Zambia for 4 years was all encompassing as we were involved in selling a wide portfolio of products across the Zambian market with service stations, commercial markets, mining customers, aviation fuels and lubricants. It was critical to learn the cultural aspects of how we did business there.
From there I took a role as the MD of our affiliate’s business in Liberia. It was a time with challenging governance and the outbreak of the Ebola pandemic in particular from 2014.
The whole country shut down. Everything shut down. Ebola stopped the whole country functioning. It was a very difficult time, but an experience that saw me grow on both a personal and professional level undoubtedly.
From there I relocated back to Paris and worked in the B2B team - a pioneer department that was focussed on seeking to build closer customer proximity.
We have always had a good ethos when it comes to customer proximity at TotalEnergies but this was about building a strategic alliance with our customers, to understand them, their objectives and their pain points so that we were better able to deliver an effective range of solutions to them, particularly in respect to decarbonization and new energies.
Unbeknown to us at that time was just how important this work was going to be given the impact of Covid a couple of years later.
How did that work help when Covid hit?
One of the biggest impacts of Covid was the fact we were isolated and not able to go and physically visit our customers - not something that we were very used to as a business.
The challenge was how did we maintain the customer contact – and what did that look like - especially when they themselves were in their own crisis management?
The critical element was our logistics and maintaining and developing even closer links with customers. It was by working with them more closely than ever that we were able to help keep the world turning. By truly understanding the needs and pains of our individual customers.
Can you tell us about your role in Hong Kong and Asia Pacific?
In terms of my new role – this opportunity was really unknown to me having so many years in the Africa region.
But the Lubmarine business is an amazing one and renowned within TotalEnergies and whilst I didn’t know a great deal about the business under the surface, I had worked with the Lubmarine team in other roles so had insights into their approach.
Whilst my role is based out of Hong Kong, it’s a very broad region that we cover with offices in Singapore, Taiwan and Korea not to mention China and the Philippines. And then we have all of our partners in Vietnam, Thailand and Japan, and distributors in Indonesia, Australia and New Zealand. So it is a very busy role and what the team does is vital.
What you have to understand with Lubmarine is that there is a sales component and a delivery component - and whilst they are completely different, they have to work in harmony for the customer who needs our products and services at different times all over the world.
But it is not just a geographical challenge we face. Another dynamic of Lubmarine is the vast array of customers and stakeholders that we work with.
You have ship owners, ship managers, procurement departments and traders. Different faces involved right across the buying process.
We are also dealing with most of the different sectors in the shipping industry and we have some really fantastic and highly experienced people in the team to help us achieve this. Given the breadth of countries that we cover you are dealing with different ways of working and different cultural approaches which is enriching.
I have the privilege to have a fantastic team. I spend a lot of time listening to them as they have such a wealth of knowledge. And because it is such an established business here with high levels of experience, the communication flows are really very, very good.
One of the biggest things I am looking forward to is to actually be going and meeting all of the teams individually as, through Covid restrictions, I still haven’t been able to meet them all which has been really frustrating.
What do you see some of the future challenges being?
Some of the big challenges are around the energy transition the shipping industry is going through, the Ukraine crisis and the challenge of supplies and Covid.
The supply chain is under transition as a result of this. Be it vessels, skills, products and services. We have not seen this transition before. Our challenge is to navigate that now.
On the decarbonization side it is very much about keeping us complimentary to TotalEnergies' decarbonization programme. How can we evolve and develop products and services that will support our customers as they are on their own decarbonization journey?
We have also got to evolve our business model and look at services and digitalization and make sure these become more deeply ingrained in the business offer.
Although we are celebrating 70 years this year since the business started, we have the vibrancy of a new business that is developing and evolving through new products and services.
What I sincerely believe is that the collaborative approach is absolutely critical to the way we move forward as a business. We are trying new things. We should always be evolving and looking at what we do and how we do it and have a continual iteration approach to what we do.
We are going to be looking at many different ways of energizing the world - and that is exciting. As an organization we are greater than the sum of our parts.
When you are not busy with work - what do you do?
I live here with my family and for me it is vitally important to have them here. I have my 2 young children and wife and they are an energizer for me away from work.
Sharing Hong Kong together is amazing, we get to share the cultural richness, the wonderful people, and we love sharing that together.