Sasha Conoplia (SC): Welcome to the latest instalment of Listed@ASX series, where we get to see some of the companies that are listed on ASX. Today, I am delighted to welcome Raimond Coneliano, the Managing Director and CEO of Redox Ltd Ticker: RDX. Redox is a leading chemical and ingredients distributor that is active in more than 1,000 specialty and commodity products and has been in operation since 1965. Welcome Raimond.

Raimond Coneliano (RC): Thank you.

SC: Redox is one of the newest listed companies on ASX and the largest since November 2021. It listed on 3 July 2023 with a market capitalisation of $1.34 billion. Congratulations.

RC: Thank you.

SC: Raimond. Can you tell us a bit about Redox and some of the key factors that influenced your decision to list?

RC: So, I guess, you know, it’s not all that exciting to talk about it parties and events that you important distribute, chemicals, raw materials, plastic. But these products are really vital for the functioning of Australia and New Zealand and all those other countries that are manufacturing industries. So, it's a fun and interesting business, and we've been in it for a long time. And I guess, you know, why list? Really, it was about protecting the future of the family.

Ours is a family business and we're a growing family, a very large Italian family already. And as you have, you know, more shareholders coming in, births, deaths, marriages, you know, all these things, it's really important to put in place good structures that allow that flex and change. And that's what we hope listing has helped us achieve for our family.

SC: Fantastic. And family business since 1965 and then sort of grew both domestically and globally, maybe a bit about that story?

RC: I guess in the nineties we went into New Zealand and then Malaysia. And finally, lastly, the United States, and that was my baby. And we’ve got one of my cousins over there who is doing a fantastic job - him and his team, an amazing market. You know, many times bigger than ours here in Australia. What we're doing there is leveraging all the great things, the great product portfolio, all our friends around the world in chemical manufacturing of food ingredient manufacturing and leveraging those things into a new market, a bigger market. So it's quite exciting.

SC: Now that you have listed what are your near-term strategic plans and priorities for the business and how does your listing assist in those plans?

RC: Good question. Yeah, I think, you know, in the near term there’s more to do in the US. The US economy is vast and one of our clients there uses as much as the whole Australian market and that’s just one customer.

So you know, leveraging those sort of opportunities is a big job and we’re going to be doing that in the US for a long time. We have just opened a business in Singapore and we're exploring opportunities there as well. So Asia is also, the medium term, you know, going to be a more interesting one. But in the short term, near-term, the US is very much our focus.

SC: Talk us through your experience to prepare for your listing and how long did it take, and what was the sort of challenges that that you were facing?

RC: Luckily for us, we were already, a company that had very diligent policies, procedures, all those, - that framework that you need to list. And we’re of a size that we had, you know, a legal counsel and separate finance functions. And, so I think we were sort of ahead of the game there compared to some of the smaller companies that come to a listing.

But we had to spin up, you know, forecasting. And the challenges there are immense because in our business, you have, all the complexities of exchange rates and costs and unit prices and logistics costs. And so forecasting can be quite difficult. But that's definitely, had to play a bigger part as we go through our listing.

SC: Was that hard to adapt to, to do that? Obviously, going from that as a private company into, I guess the governance around being a publicly listed company?

RC: Yeah, I think the onus is on us to be a little bit more exact, a little bit more scientific and with forecasting and of course, you know, we’re endeavouring to do that now. And I think we've done a very good job to date. So, yeah, I'd say that's one of the biggest challenges coming to a listed environment.

SC: So following on from that, what sort of adjustments have you had to make to your operations to manage the requirements to become a listed company?

RC: Very few really: a few extra heads in finance is mostly, where we needed extra help. But of course there’s a lot of client assistance from consultants. And, you know, our auditors and all, all the friends that we work with that, they’ve been very supportive and helpful to, get us up to speed on everything we need. But we haven’t really changed a lot about the business, actually. Our aim is to keep in place all the things that have made Redox a great company and not, overreact to being a listed company. Hopefully no one will notice the difference.

SC: Fantastic. So a bit of liquidity for the family, some planning going forward and maybe the listing will maybe provide some strategic opportunities into the future depending on markets and opportunity.

RC: Yeah, I think another thing that’s important to think about is that, of the recent history, you know, we’ve had the Ukraine war, we’ve had supply chain crunch, we’ve had COVID. You know, these are all pretty sizable shocks that would and have scuttled some businesses. We needed to spin up the amount of working capital in the business. So, you know, we were lucky that our shareholders haven’t gone out and bought Ferraris or anything exciting like that. 

They were able to lend that money back from the dividends back to the business to help with that higher capital requirement. But we don't want to rely on that going forward. So, you know, a good thing about being a listed company is you have that extra flexibility to finance the business if something, we don't want to miss out on any opportunities. We want to keep growing as fast as possible. So this will help us do that.

SC: Thank you for your time today, Raimond, and for sharing your insights. We wish you and Redox all the best in your growth and listings journey. And thank you again for your time.

RC: Thank you very much.