Malaysia's Petronas to Cut 10% of Workforce After Profits Slump
Malaysia's state-owned oil firm will reduce headcount by upward of 5,000 people, Petronas Chief Executive Officer Muhammad Taufik said in a briefing in Kuala Lumpur on Thursday. It will also freeze promotions and hiring until December 2026, he said.
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Forbes
3 hours ago
- Forbes
How Sungai Design Is Turning River Plastic Into Beautiful Designs
What do you do when you've pulled over 7 million pounds of plastic out of rivers — and no one wants it? That was the unexpected dilemma facing Sam Bencheghib and his siblings, co-founders of Sungai Watch, a nonprofit dedicated to cleaning Indonesia's waterways. What began as a single trash barrier in a river near their parents' home in Bali has since grown into a national movement, with over 300 rivers cleaned daily, a team of 165 full-time staff, and an ever-growing mountain of plastic waste in need of a second life. It wasn't the first time the Bencheghibs had taken action into their own hands. Growing up in Bali, they spent weekends organizing beach cleanups as teenagers — their first response to the plastic pollution washing ashore each rainy season. That early activism planted the seed for everything that followed: from building a media company to highlight environmental issues, to kayaking down the world's most polluted river in boats made from plastic bottles to raise awareness. But collecting trash is only half the battle. The next challenge? Figuring out what to do with it. In 2024, the siblings launched Sungai Design — a for-profit social enterprise that transforms hard-to-recycle plastic into beautifully designed products. Their mission is simple but ambitious: reduce river pollution by building a circular system where trash is recovered, cleaned, reprocessed, and remade into something useful and desirable. The company's first product, the Ombak Chair, is made from 2,000 plastic bags — the most common type of waste Sungai Watch collects. 'We had over 5 million pounds of trash sitting in our warehouses that nobody wanted to take,' Bencheghib explained. Sungai Design emerged as a direct response — and a creative one. When the chair launched in March 2024, it sparked global interest. A video showing the transformation from river plastic to sculptural furniture went viral, amassing 198 million views and driving over 600,000 visits to their website in a matter of weeks. More than 10,000 people added the chair to their carts. But there was a catch. At the time, they didn't have an online payment system in place — nor the production capacity to meet demand. 'We could only make four chairs a week,' said Bencheghib. 'It took us over a year to fulfill the first wave of orders.' Since then, they've scaled up. The Ombak Chair is now available as a flat-pack version, reducing shipping costs and expanding accessibility. The price has dropped by 30%, and customers now assemble the chair themselves — IKEA-style. Sungai Design has also expanded its product line to include hospitality-grade items like tissue boxes, trays, and coasters — all made from plastic bags and other river waste. And they're just getting started. 'We're only tapping into one of the 30 materials we collect,' Bencheghib said. His team is now experimenting with recycling glass into ceramics, shredding fabric waste, and developing prototypes for phone cases — all made from river trash. They call it 'modern day mining': turning yesterday's discarded packaging into tomorrow's raw material. What sets Sungai Design apart isn't just its design sensibility — it's the end-to-end control of its supply chain. The same organization that pulls plastic from the river also sorts, washes, recycles, designs, and manufactures the final product. That transparency gives every object a traceable origin and a powerful story. It also fuels something bigger. By scanning and recording barcodes on every piece of waste collected, Sungai Watch has built a database of more than 2.5 million items — helping identify the most polluting brands and working with governments to push for policy change. Sungai Design doesn't just recycle; it reinforces advocacy and systemic reform. Now in its angel round, the company is raising $5 million to expand production, logistics, and team capacity. But Bencheghib is clear: this isn't a Silicon Valley-style rocketship — it's a long-term investment in infrastructure, innovation, and impact. Sungai Design is proving that the future of environmental action won't be won by cleanup alone — it will be built, piece by piece, by businesses that turn problems into products, and impact into infrastructure. What started as a river barrier in Bali is now a blueprint for global change — one chair, one story, one recycled plastic bag at a time.
New York Times
4 hours ago
- New York Times
How One American Brand Stays Ahead of Trump Tariff Whac-a-Mole
Keen Footwear thought it was safe. A decade ago, long before the trade wars and the disruptions of the Covid-19 pandemic, the American company anticipated the need to limit its exposure to upheaval in the global economy. It began abandoning factories in China that had long made its products: rugged sandals and hiking boots. It set up plants in Southeast Asia and India and then another in the Dominican Republic. In June, the company opened its newest factory, in Kentucky, an investment in the proposition now emblazoned on its shoe boxes: 'American Built.' But that branding and the company's investment in the United States coincide with the reality that Keen, like most modern businesses, depends on access to a global supply chain for parts and raw materials. The company strives to find local suppliers to limit its vulnerability to faraway trouble, but it still moves many components around the globe to assemble its products. That movement is now subject to an ever-changing assortment of American tariffs. Keen's strategy to limit its dependence on any single part of the world has not been enough to spare the company from the turbulence caused by President Trump's trade war. On a recent morning at its factory just outside Louisville, Ky., the company's chief operating officer, Hari Perumal, was wrestling with Mr. Trump's latest salvo: the raising of tariffs on imports from India to 50 percent. Mr. Perumal was also struggling to understand the details of a recently announced American trade deal with Vietnam, where Keen has a factory. And he was mulling plans to transfer the making of boot uppers from Keen's factory in Thailand, where the tariff was 20 percent, to the Dominican Republic, where the tariff was 10 percent. Mr. Perumal expressed confidence that Keen would manage all this without upheaval. He took comfort in having prioritized backup plans and flexibility, in contrast to the typical approach in retail — leaning heavily on one country like China to produce at the lowest cost. Still, the exercise of having to calculate, and then recalculate, the effect of tariffs in response to Mr. Trump's shifts was an irritating distraction. 'It changes by the day,' Mr. Perumal said. 'Certainly, this kind of disruption is not good for business.' Keen has pledged not to raise its prices this year. But the rest of the industry is already showing signs of inflation, said Matt Priest, the chief executive of the Footwear Distributors and Retailers of America, a trade association. 'President Trump's sweeping new tariffs are a tax on every American family buying shoes during the height of back-to-school season,' he said in a statement. 'These tariffs only add to the pressure at the checkout counter.' Mr. Perumal, 58, grew up in southern India, and he now lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. He has spent his career navigating the fluctuations of global manufacturing. He first visited footwear factories in China in 1996. When he joined Keen in 2009, the company still relied heavily on Chinese factories. But as wages there rose, he began pursuing alternative places to make products. He was intent on shrinking the distance between Keen's factories and its customers in the United States, the source of more than half of the company's sales. For several years, Keen operated a factory in León, Mexico. As the pandemic spread, the local authorities halted production, prompting Keen to move the factory to the Dominican Republic. The proximity to the American market allowed Keen to double production even as the chaos of the pandemic prevented many other businesses from getting their products to customers. But even though Keen was seasoned in adapting to crisis, it could not plan for the constant changes in trade policy delivered by the Trump administration. Mr. Perumal had run a simulation that assumed the India tariffs would be 25 percent. That was manageable because he figured Keen's suppliers in India would absorb some of the higher costs. Then Mr. Trump doubled the tariffs as punishment for India's continued buying of crude oil from Russia. 'Now, that's out the door,' Mr. Perumal said. 'They can't compensate for that level of tariff.' For many global businesses, the latest American tariffs on India are especially unwelcome. India had beckoned as a promising alternative to China. Walmart has in recent years shifted substantial portions of its production to India from plants in China. In response to pressure from Mr. Trump to forsake China, Apple has invested heavily in shifting the production of its iPhones to India. Mr. Perumal's India operations already send much of their wares to Britain. Now he might also divert some of the production in India to Japan, where Keen operates stores. The few products made in India for the American market could be shifted to factories in Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. He was also a little less worried because of his new Kentucky factory. That plant is using machinery transferred from a facility that Keen had operated in Portland, Ore., where the company has its headquarters. Difficulty hiring workers there prompted Keen to move to Kentucky. Louisville was already the site of its national distribution center. United Parcel Service operates an air cargo hub in the city. In placing the new factory next door to the distribution center, Keen has reduced its carbon emissions, a key element for a brand whose marketing emphasizes its commitment to protecting the environment. The Kentucky plant is at the core of Keen's efforts to increase its American production from 5 percent of its global sales to 9 percent within the next 18 months. Its next milestone is 15 percent by 2030. The factory makes boots that construction workers use. Production is heavily automated, with robotic arms placing and lifting boots onto a giant carousel, where other robots inject a gooey infusion of polyurethane that joins the upper to the sole. Every 22 seconds, a new pair are completed. Mr. Perumal views the new plant as a useful way to serve a market that increasingly places a premium on domestic production. But he depicts domestic production as a niche, while dismissing the concept that footwear manufacturing will return en masse to American shores. 'What we are doing here, manufacturing in the United States, is not the solution to solve all these issues,' he said. Tariffs will not force production home, Mr. Perumal said, because of differences in the price of making products in the United States versus Asia. 'Where are we going to get the people?' he asked. 'Are we going to find Americans willing to work for factory wages?' He pointed at towering stacks of cardboard waiting to be folded into red-white-and-blue shoe boxes promoting the provenance of Keen's utility boots. The boxes, which will hold boots made in Louisville, were shipped in from Cambodia. Even after the tariffs, the price was one-third what Keen would have to pay for similar packaging made in the United States. Leather uppers made at Keen's factory in Thailand sat in boxes waiting to be fed into the assembly line. Keen has identified a good source of leather in Mississippi. But after the cost of bringing in other needed items — shoelaces, thread, eyelets and waterproof lining, many of them made in Asia — is factored in, making uppers in the United States would be five to six times as expensive as making them overseas, Mr. Perumal said. These sorts of details drive his interest in shifting production from Asia to the Dominican Republic, which is part of a regional trade agreement with the United States and Central American countries. Under its terms, Keen can ship components to the Dominican Republic from Asia, turn them into uppers and then export them to the United States free of duty. That seems like a sensible adaptation, yet Mr. Perumal is under no illusions that Keen is immune to the changing variables that Mr. Trump has inserted into the global economy. 'We can only control the controllables,' he said, which appear to be a shrinking category.
Yahoo
5 hours ago
- Yahoo
Malaysia's currency rally not over yet as analysts eye rate cuts
By: Rthvika Suvarna (Bloomberg) — Malaysia's ringgit is poised to restart a rally, potentially hitting its strongest level against the dollar in almost a year, as analysts see a dovish central bank and fiscal pledges boosting sentiment. The ringgit may appreciate to 4.15 per dollar in the fourth quarter on further central bank easing, according to Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp., while Malayan Banking Bhd. forecasts 4.10 by December. MUFG Bank Ltd. expects a gain of 1.5% from current levels as a US tariff deal boosts Malaysia's export competitiveness. The ringgit's rebound from an April low has stalled, but upcoming inflation data may revive expectations of Bank Negara Malaysia rate cuts, spurring bond inflows. While looser monetary policy can weigh on currencies, prospects of a Federal Reserve cut in September reduce the risk of a selloff against the dollar. Analysts are now focusing on the potential benefits of lower domestic rates, with currency sentiment further buoyed by government structural reforms that may support long-term growth. Expectations for a stronger ringgit also hinge on sustained foreign inflows and the government's 'commitment to follow through on fiscal consolidation,' said Christopher Wong, executive director and foreign-exchange strategist at OCBC. His bank projects another rate cut by Malaysia's central bank later this year. Global funds poured a record $4.3 billion into Malaysia's bonds in the second quarter, betting the last rate-cut holdout central bank in Southeast Asia would lower rates — a move BNM delivered with a 25-basis-point reduction in July. Prospects of looser US monetary policy and a weaker dollar may also stoke demand for Malaysia's sovereign debt. Risks remain despite Malaysia securing a reduction in the US reciprocal tariff rate to 19% from a threatened 25%. Some analysts warn that global trade volatility could still weigh on the currency. 'The prolonging of the trade uncertainty, and the lingering possibility that the tariffs land higher than current levels' presents a sizeable risk for Malaysian businesses, said Matthew Ryan, head of market strategy at Ebury Partners. In this scenario, 'we would expect a moderate hit to Malaysia's economy, and a more pronounced sell-off in the ringgit,' he said. Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim unveiled an ambitious five-year plan to boost growth through 2030, alongside a one-time 2.8 billion ringgit ($665 million) stimulus with cash handouts and lower fuel prices. But the government has also made attempts to rein in fiscal largesse, including cutting diesel subsidies and expanding the sales and service tax. These measures, combined with contained inflation – 'which could give rise to market expectations for further BNM policy easing,' – are seen as a key pillar for the ringgit's strength, according to Lloyd Chan, a currency strategist at MUFG, who expects the currency to reach 4.15 by year-end. 'What stands out for the ringgit is the ongoing government-led structural reforms aimed at boosting productivity and enhancing fiscal discipline, which should provide enduring support for the currency,' he said. The ringgit closed at 4.2120 on Friday. This week's main economic events: Monday, Aug. 18: Thailand 2Q GDP, Singapore non-oil domestic exports Tuesday, Aug. 19: Australia consumer confidence, Malaysia trade balance Wednesday, Aug. 20: New Zealand rate decision, Bank Indonesia rate decision, Japan trade balance, China 1- and 5-year loan prime rate, Taiwan export orders and 2Q BoP current account balance Thursday, Aug. 21: South Korea 20-day exports/imports, New Zealand trade balance, Indonesia 2Q BoP current account balance Friday, Aug. 22: Japan CPI, Malaysia CPI More stories like this are available on ©2025 Bloomberg L.P.
