INTERNATIONAL PESTIES

FRANCES MCKIM:

Leicester, England, United Kingdom

Freelance journalist and public relations consultant specialising in international professional pest management

A graduate in agricultural economics from Reading University, Frances has a long association with pest management in the UK and internationally due to her involvement with the public health insecticide, Ficam. She was elected the first female president of the British Pest Control Association (BPCA) in 1982 and was inducted into the Pest Control News Hall of Fame in 2008. She launched BPCA’s Professional Pest Controller magazine in 1993 and edited it for 15 years. Along with Helen Riby she founded Pest magazine in 2008 and continued as editor and co-publisher until January 2020.

Frances McKim has been involved with the international pest management market in a variety of roles for about 40 years, which included being President of the British Pest Control Association (BPCA). Having worked for many years for one of the large multinational pesticide manufacturers, she had her own PR consulting business, ActiveSolutions, until launching in 2009, Pest Magazine in the UK with her business partner until they sold it nearly three years ago. Since then, she has helped with press work for the likes of the International Conference on Urban Pests (ICUP) event and the National Pest Management Association (NPMA) for PestWorld. More recently Frances has been to the FAOPMA Pest Summit 2022 held in Kyoto, Japan in early November and shared with us her personal reflections of that event and doing business in Japan.

Having been involved with the European and American professional pest control sector for over 40 years you build up a feeling of familiarity and confidence when attending events. However, attending the FAOPMA Pest Summit 2022, and spending time in Japan, brought me to an abrupt stop…. I was totally out of my comfort zone. Despite the language barrier, when visiting Japan you can be assured of a warm but very polite welcome.

One of the first things you notice is how organized and clean everything is – not a spot of litter can be seen anywhere – regrettably not the case in Europe.

Judging by the exhibition, there are pests but they too seem very discrete. Not a single flying or crawling insect was spotted, nor a single rodent bait box in use!

Attempting to report and photograph events at the conference posed quite a challenge too. Never before have I been instructed to remain seated when attempting to photograph the opening speaker, an ex-Prime Minister, as he opened the conference. For fear of attack following the assassination of the former Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, in July this year, he came with armed guards and if I stood up I was told I might well get shot!

We were also all forbidden from taking any photos of one of the speakers, Chan Hyuk Chyun, the President of CESCO from South Korea, for his fear of being kidnapped. Even a large percentage of his own employees do not know who he is, or what he looks like.

As the event unfolded and I started to find my feet, I soon became in awe of the Japanese business culture.

In his presentation Taro Kanazawa, President-elect of FAOPMA, and CEO of pest and hygiene company, Hysia, explained the culture embedded in Japanese companies and how they survive for generations.

He used a quote from Eiichi Shibusawa (1840-1931) who is fondly referred to as the ‘father of Japanese capitalism’. He stated that ethics and business growth can be achieved simultaneously – a very different model to traditional Western capitalism where the aim is to maximise shareholder value. He said: “People who just chase money for personal interests are looked down on.” This echoes the non-profit borderless work referred to by Junichiro Katayama in his keynote address.

Other staggering features of Japanese companies are not only their scale, their commitment to research but also the very high degree of family ownership.

The research and training facilities described by the unphotographed President from CESCO in South Korea, who hold an estimated 90% market share, were mind blowing. For example, in what they called their CESCO Member City they can train thousands of technicians at any one time, housed in their own hotel, with 20 classrooms and a wide variety of simulated treatment rooms. All new employees get 700 hours of training with 200 hours as an annual top-up.

The length of ownership of companies is also a feature of Japanese commerce. In his presentation, Taro Kanazawa detailed some remarkable statistics –33,076 companies are over 100 years old, representing 41.3% of the total with 1,340 companies over 200 years old, 65% of the total. In comparison, the figures for the UK are 1,861 (2.3%) for 100 years old and 83 (4.0%) for 200 years. And many of these long-standing companies are family owned.

Mr Kanazawa’s own company, Hysia, was founded by his grandmother in 1969, but you can’t fail to be impressed by the company heritage of one of the other speakers, Shiro Ueyama, a director of insecticide manufacturer, Kincho, founded in 1885. He is the great-great grandson of the founder, Ueyama Eiichiro, who holds a significant place in the history of insecticides. It was he who acquired chrysanthemum seeds, the source of pyrethrum, from a British plant trader in 1886 and then promoted its planting in Wakayama prefecture. He came up with the idea of kneading pyrethrum into incense sticks and then invented the spiral shaped mosquito coil, regarded as the world’s first industrialised insecticide.

To conclude, my visit to Japan and to attend FAOPMA, can only be described as one of my life’s experiences.

Some of you might also be amused to read an article Frances did when they published Pest magazine... there was a TV series featuring only female pest controllers - called the ladykillers...