Two years ago, I enjoyed participating in Primo's New Year's celebration in China. This year, in the shadow of covid-19, the celebration was reduced to a staff meeting because of the coronavirus held at Zhuhai's local town hall. Yet, with positive vibes.

The Spring Festival, 2021 at Primo China, was far from a celebration in the traditional sense. It was instead a marking of how to stand together through a crisis. Our Vice General Manager in China, Kathy Li, presented the 2020 results and the plans for 2021. She also took the opportunity to introduce the group's overall financial situation and the One Company strategy - the prospects are looking good in China.

There are more reasons for this, and I think that we have all learned a lesson or two in 2020.

Our One Company mindset has helped us through tough times. Like in China, all Primo entities conducted an internal session - digital or physical – during 2021, with our One Company strategy as the central theme. It became clear that our common platform is crucial for our performance.

Just before the coronavirus hit the world last year, we had a series of more general discussions about Primo. What started as an open discussion about who we are and how we should proceed as a company soon became a matter of values. The talks helped us to look deep into ourselves and into our company history to rethink our identity, discover who we are today, and use that insight to excel in the journey ahead.

Working together at a new level

We realised that being One Company and not separate entities means that we join forces wherever it makes sense. We are now acting more intensively on that promise, establishing a group tooling centre, an international purchasing department, a joint material section, and a cross-border team working with sustainability. These initiatives are only possible as a group.

We also realised that to support our customers and improve their performance we cannot allow ourselves to lean back. We have to keep developing the business. To some extent, Corona gave us the time and incitement to push these initiatives forward, and our starting point made it possible to invest in this developing process.

We come out stronger from covid-19

Primo is a family-owned company, and our talks have made it very clear that Primo is a family. This means that if we are to handle the future challenges, both in terms of markets and growth as well as internally, we should think and act like a family. 

This insight has been integrated in our One Company strategy that defines Primo Identity. It describes the purpose of our business, our strengths, our ambitions, and our culture. This is the CORE of our Company, and we describe them as:

• We Care
• We are Openminded
• We are Reliable
• We Execute

Despite the covid-19, we have been fortunate to be a dynamic company. But the last year has made it very clear that our CORE is more critical than ever. I am happy to see that reflected wherever I go – from my own home office, throughout Europe and Russia, and all the way to Zhuhai in China.