He resisted going into the family business as a young man, preferring instead to pursue his passion for biology and the environment.
But it was during a stint as a field assistant in the pristine rainforests of Papua New Guinea that Mr Heinrich Jessen saw a way for business and nature to come together.
He eventually entered the family business spearheading environment, health and safety initiatives, and is today chairman of Jebsen & Jessen (Southeast Asia), a S$1billion-turnover engineering, manufacturing and distribution company headquartered in Singapore with an uncompromisingly eco-conscious core.
It’s not always the most profitable path to take, admits Mr Jessen, 44, a Danish Singapore permanent resident who has lived here for the last 17 years. But he wouldn’t have it any other way.
Jebsen & Jessen (SEA) is one of three companies belonging to a family enterprise that began in 1895 as a shipping agency facilitating trade along China’s coast. Mr Jessen’s father established Jebsen & Jessen (SEA) in Singapore and Malaysia in 1963, and Jessen junior lived in Singapore between the ages of 10 and 15.
He has always enjoyed greenery and hiking, but the green trigger occurred at the age of 20 when, after a year in business school, he went to work for the World Wildlife Fund in Italy. “I had a very lowly job there, mainly translating documents, but it exposed me to the issues and we did lots of nature conservation programmes. That’s when I decided to study it,” he says.
His decision to pursue environmental studies went against the expectation that he would enter the family business. His father was “very disappointed when I took that decision because I had no intention of going into the business and, at that time, I think neither he nor I saw that these two things could be brought together - I wanted to be in nature and he wanted to run a successful business.”
Into the wild
After graduating from George Washington University in the United States, Mr Jessen applied for a number of field assistant positions, and picked one in the “most ulu (far flung)” location “furthest from any point of civilisation”: A project run on behalf of Conservation International in the middle of Papua New Guinea.
The four-year project took place in the Crater Mountain region of Papua New Guinea, and Mr Jessen signed on for two three-month rotations as a field assistant to an ornithologist and plant ecologist. He researched on the fruit dispersal system of a particular tree species, and did behavioural experiments on a flightless bird called a dwarf cassowary (no cruelty involved, he assures).
The researchers lived largely on tinned food in a tin-roofed wood house lit by kerosene lamps and with limited electricity generated by solar panels. They received mail delivered by porters fortnightly, and tuned in to the Christian Science Monitor’s radio station to stay in touch with the outside world - the team once wrote the folks at the radio station a letter, and got a tremendous high hearing it read over the airwaves a few months later.
Mr Jessen speaks fondly of his time there: “Would I do it again? Yes! Would I recommend it to anybody else? Yes. It’s like National Service, something you’ll never forget.”
One of the first, in the 1990’s
It was also amidst the stunning scenery and crystal-clear waters that Mr Jessen read a book on his family’s history, and realised a possible way to combine his interest in nature and what his family wanted of him.
He went for his Master’s in tropical ecology but eventually opted for industrial environmental management, and joined the company thereafter.
At the time, Jebsen & Jessen (SEA) was engaged in several activities with environment, health and safety risks that “we probably weren’t very aware of”, he says. “We were compliant with the law where we needed to be, but weren’t going the extra step to be proactive.”
Mr Jessen got the company ISO-certified in the areas of environment and health and safety, becoming one of the first in the region to do so in the late 1990s.
With the new direction forged, the firm pulled the plug on several of its businesses that were “not in line anymore with our environmental ethic”. For instance, it used to export Indonesian wood furniture mainly to Europe, but got out of the business in 1996 when its supplier declined to seek Forest Stewardship Council certification.
It also exited the marine paint business in the late 1990s because of the harm to the marine organisms that an ingredient called tributyltin oxide caused.
Path to carbon neutrality
Over the past 15 years, the company has chosen to remain largely in businesses in which it is among the top three in the market - it is No 1 or 2 in the overhead travelling cranes business in most of ASEAN, for instance. Jebsen & Jessen (SEA) is also actively looking at suitable acquisition targets, and to grow in markets like Cambodia and Myanmar.
In Singapore, its presence has contributed to some key landmarks - its various business units provided the irrigation and window-cleaning systems of the Gardens by the Bay, and produced and supplied strong, lightweight polystyrene blocks to raise some areas of the park. The same polystyrene blocks, called Jeofoam, were used to fill part of the world’s longest public cantilever atop the Marina Bay Sands.
These days, Jebsen & Jessen (SEA) are on the path towards carbon neutrality - not the easiest goal for an entity engaged in diverse activities ranging from the distribution, manufacturing and servicing of cranes, to the supply of turf and irrigation equipment and moulded packaging.
It is installing solar panels at its crane factory in Tuas - which will supply 149,380 KWh of electricity annually, or one-fifth of energy consumption - and looking at projects to offset its carbon emissions.
A way to create a “level playing field” for companies to reduce their carbon footprint is for a carbon tax imposed in all countries, says Mr Jessen. “Nobody wants to be the only one taking the big step. Very few governments want to impose a carbon tax if nobody else is doing it. No company wants to self-impose a carbon tax if no one else is doing it.
“I think carbon tax doesn’t have to come on top of income tax. It can be, instead, a portion of your income tax, so I don’t think it has to mean you’re paying more taxes.”
Resistance and the bottomline
Asked if his green initiatives caused resistance from his colleagues, Mr Jessen says: “Absolutely. We have very flat decision-making, so if you’re a manager and incentivised on your profits and you’re managing your own business and accustomed to making your own decisions, and someone from the head office comes and he’s also son of the chairman and owner, it can become quite irritating.”
Some initiatives have been good for the bottomline - insurance premiums went down significantly after environment, health and safety systems were in place, for instance.
But others cost money, and that’s when Mr Jessen tries to get his colleagues to think longer-term. “Carbon neutrality is one of them. And there, quite frankly, my case is quite simple,” he says. “I have two kids (aged 7 and 4) and they are still too young to know much about global climate change. But … I can see there will come a day when they will ask, ‘Global climate change is having some disastrous consequences. So, Dad, what did you do about it? You knew this was coming, you have some influence as a whole company.’
“So I’d like to be able to look them in the eye and say, ‘Well, at least I got us to carbon neutrality’.”
