Theirs is a story of a marriage made in heaven evolving into a partnership that prospered from a passion for growth and transformation.
When husband-and-wife team Tay Kiat Seng and Dewi Kwek founded water and wastewater treatment firm Memiontec with their savings in 1992, they swapped stable jobs in well-established companies in the industry for a small office in Balestier.
In the early years, they shared just one table, fax machine and telephone. He is Memiontec’s executive director and chief executive, and she is its managing director.
“We wanted to be entrepreneurs and liked the challenge of creating something of our own,” says Mr Tay, 60, who met Ms Kwek, 56, in 1988. They were working at the same company in Australia then.
Their leap of faith paid off. Over 30 years, the couple, who have two children together, built Memiontec into a regional powerhouse with about 240 employees and subsidiaries in Indonesia and China.
The company, which listed on the Singapore Exchange’s Catalist board in 2020, is worth $132 million. Last year it clinched its largest contract, worth $56.6 million, to install equipment for the Changi Water Reclamation Plant, and started its third expansion overseas, to Vietnam.
Along the way, it has diversified its business to add revenue streams, used different strategies to succeed in each market, and continued to learn from others to enhance its plans for the future.
Ms Kwek shares: “You have to be open to change and embrace transformation if you want to grow. We want to hit $500 million in market capitalisation by 2026 and expand Memiontec into a multinational corporation that flies the Singapore flag everywhere.”
Expanding into new markets
The company spent its initial years winning local contracts to develop a track record, as well as earning licences to bid for larger projects in the public sector.
After six years, it started to look abroad. “Singapore is very small, and the opportunities are greater in bigger countries,” says Ms Kwek.
Indonesia was a natural target, with its rapidly growing population and industries that need clean water. The country has over 270 million people (47 times the size of Singapore’s population) – a figure that could grow to more than 290 million by 2030, according to World Bank estimates.
It is also where Ms Kwek, who is now a Singapore permanent resident, grew up. Armed with her knowledge of Indonesia’s business landscape, the firm focused on multinational companies operating in Indonesia, especially those in the pharmaceutical sector.
“Foreign businesses value Singapore’s reputation in water treatment, and the pharmaceutical sector needs not just clean but ultra-pure water. This is our forte. We had fewer competitors in Indonesia in this.”
