Aloke Lohia

Vice Chairman and Group Chief Executive Officer, Indorama Ventures Public Company Limited

Aloke Lohia was born in 1958 in Calcutta, India. He graduated with a Bachelor of Commerce from the University of Delhi and holds an Honorary Doctoral Degree of Business Administration from Rajamangala University of Technology Krungthep in Thailand. His father is a successful businessman who eventually established the family in Indonesia in 1976. Lohia struck out on his own to set up his first company in Thailand in 1988; a small chemical company that used plant waste to make furfural oil for the steel industry. He went on to establish Thailand’s first worsted wool yarn manufacturer in 1994.

Realizing that Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET), which is used in the packaging industry, was in great demand but short supply, he set up Thailand’s first producer of PET in 1995 and eventually spreading out around the globe from North America to Europe, Asia to Africa. Since that first small PET factory in Thailand, Indorama Ventures has grown to become the largest PET company in the world today with US$7.5 billion in revenue in 2013. Over time, Lohia has grown his domain to cover 46 operations in 18 countries globally, keeping the existing operational management in place with every acquisition to build a truly multicultural organization.

Deeply focused on sustainability, Lohia has concentrated on raising the company’s corporate social responsibility to world class levels. Initiating good corporate governance policies, he has driven the company to place at the forefront a broad range of important issues from human rights to the environment and the treatment of customers and suppliers and is now pursuing targets for the reduction of the group’s footprint on the surrounding communities and environment.

By maintaining a people-centric vision, Lohia believes that his business can grow further and is aiming to make Indorama Ventures one of the top 20 chemical companies in the world.