Ved Krishna:
And a lot of people are doing stuff so Im sure you have lots of other opportunity to exchange those notes because I see so many interesting things
happening in this space and talking about plastic they dont have to drain out 99.8% of water. So its a lot faster. I just wanted to go back to your thought of not coming from the space of fiber. Theres the story of Kimberly Clark
taking over a mill, when they still ran paper mills, called Paper Company and they were trying to set up a new plant and on purpose they did not hire any paper technologists. And guess what, that was the fastest, most profitable mill that they had,
because they didnt know what cant be done. So similar to your experience, I think thats so good.
Troy Swope:
Yeah, thats a great analogy. Its but its really been a huge, huge competitive advantage for us is that we didnt have any preconceived
ideas of what was possible. So our ideas was all things were possible. We just had to have the right engineering discipline.
Ved Krishna:
Absolutely. And its the, its common sense. One of the things one of my early mentors taught me and it stayed with me is that think of yourself as
the fiber. So when you think of yourself as the fiber you know what you feel like when you go through a slot, when you are refined in a certain way and when youre trained in a certain way. So if you start thinking like the fiber you get the
basics right. So, so you know, thats something that stayed with me. Its, Its the simple things right, that make a difference. So moving along. What about raw material? So what Im inspired truly inspired by is your vision to
scale and to really, you know, make a difference because we can talk all about creating these nice boutique technologies. But you know, the pile is so large, that if you really want to make a difference, it has to be scalable. So how do you see that
getting, getting solutions on the raw material space? And is that a challenge that you foresee and how you how are you planning to build that supply chain?
Troy Swope:
Well, we are I mean, we are scaling. We delivered
hundreds of millions of units last year. They were billions of units this year. We have a factory in Mexico, its 1.7 million square feet. 4,000 employees. Right, so were building 1.5 million square feet in Poland right now and
looking at Thailand. We have a team in China. So we are scaling, scaling quite a bit. So the best way to scale relative to the materials availability is you have to have a lot of flexibility, right? So if youre in a region where sugarcane
production is high, obviously the begasse pulp is a really good option. China, you see a lot of bamboo, those kinds of things. North America, its hardwood and softwood. Now, with that said the best solution for the planet is if I can use a
recycled box. Thats the best solution for the planet. So its a huge CO2 emission reduction. When you compare to plastic, the energy that was used to make the box you dont have
to claim its already there for fiber stores. So we love that as a percentage of our materials. We can find boxes everywhere. We love it. Its very, very, very hard to use because its unpredictable what it is. And you got cleanliness
issues, you got to get out the starches and glues and those kinds of things. But when you can use that fiber, it has a huge impact on the planet, CO2 emissions, your cost structures better,
theres a lot of real positives, so we like that material and then we feed in others, begasse and hardwoods, softwoods, wheat straws, you know, we have customers that want us to use pineapples and sahi and some other things as well. And if
theres value in it, and we get a good quality fiber, well do that. But today its the things that you really know, hardwoods, softwoods, recycled boxes, begasse, bamboo.
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