Word: dhanin
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They did. Five years later, Dhanin has reduced CP's debt and re-established its foothold in China. CP has set up a new brewery and a motorcycle factory and has announced plans to open 100 hypermarkets on the mainland by 2006. "If we don't go in now, we will be sidelined,'' says Dhanin. Chinese competitors, in particular, "are springing up like mushrooms after a rain...
However, just as Dhanin is building anew, he has been confronted with another potentially damaging setback: avian flu, which has devastated the Thai poultry industry over the past several months. As the No. 1 chicken producer in Asia, CP has been swept up in the crisis. Initially, rumors swirled that CP had contributed to the disease's spread in Thailand by trying to hide the outbreak. CP's participation in any cover-up "is just not true,'' says Dhanin. The company's chicken farms are a bulwark against the spread of diseases, he contends, because its birds are kept...
Moreover, Dhanin says CP began warning Thai farmers about the possibility of avian flu in November. That's when company officials showed him a newspaper photo of birds dying in central Thailand. Dhanin says he had no idea it was the deadly H5N1 virus, but he knew he had to act. Orders went out to seal up all of CP's chicken plants by further restricting access to plant premises--even delivery trucks were kept out. On Jan. 23, government officials announced that two young boys had tested positive for avian flu. The next day, CP's stock plummeted...
Though company officials have not said how much the outbreak will cost CP, Dhanin is once again digging in to fight for his business. After all, he comes from a family that started with next to nothing. Dhanin's father and uncle emigrated from China's Guangdong province in 1921, settled in Bangkok and scraped together enough money to open a seed shop. That sprouted operations in animal feed and fertilizer. When Dhanin, the youngest of four sons, took over the company in 1964, he moved aggressively into poultry farming. A tie-in with Arbor Acres Farm...
...weren't for the challenge of making it again in China, Dhanin says, he might have retired after the 1997 economic crisis. But he's preparing for the day when age reduces his role. His three sons attended top Western business schools and hold jobs at some of CP's most demanding ventures. "You should place your children at the feet of masters rather than make them bosses right away," Dhanin says. Although the sons work as hard as their father, they're open to other outlooks on life. "My father may not like to hear this," says the youngest...