He started the career as an employee of Denmark’s largest company Maersk (A.P. Møller – Mærsk) and was sent to China; followed by working for the Danish energy efficiency expert Danfoss’ Southeast Asia operations. And now the especially in Malaysia well-known Danish face has reinvented his career to be at the helm of the German company Meiko Clean Solutions’ operations in the same region. This gives Allan Jensen’s presence there a new lease of life – where he is highly motivated by the challenges that comes with his new role. And for Allan, many years later, Asia is still an adventure – while he at first only had thoughts of one other country outside of Denmark, namely the U.S. His Danfoss chapter has closed, while another just begun. Get a rundown, including insights, from his Asian adventures so far!
‘You’re going to China,’ the HR department at Maersk in late 1994 told its rising up-and-coming young man, who had just completed two years as Shipping Trainee at A.P. Møller’s Shipping school, and was hoping to be sent to the United States – the country he loved over anything else.
“’China! What am I going do there?’ I exclaimed. I could probably find China on a map, a continent I didn’t think I would ever visit, why would I go there?!” recalls Allan.
Undergoing four job interviews before being hired, Allan had clearly expressed his desire to work in the U.S, and every time the interviewers had rejected it. Maersk, after all, had presence all over the world. But it annoyed Allan who saw Maersk as his gateway to an international life in the promised land.
Previously, Allan had been an exchange student in the U.S, and proudly obtained his driving licence as a 16-year-old.
“Cars and driving are my big passions, so that played a big part of it as well. And my first car had a roaring big V8 engine.”
He was just so in awe of everything that the U.S stood for.
Allan had grown up in a middle-class family in a suburb of Copenhagen, and with a very local outlook on life.
“But there was something that attracted me to go overseas, especially the United States. And I had spent ten months in the U.S living with a wonderful family for whom education was central to their outlook – contrary to my family more centred on hard work.”
And the American family convinced Allan that he ought to do something about his education, and opened their home once again, so he decided to return and study at college.
“That really changed my whole outlook on life. For the first time I loved being at school. I spent 2.5 years getting a college degree. Then, running out of funds I had to return home , and it would take another 25 years before I was able to complete my Masters degree.”
Adventure in China
Then AP Moller was looking for management trainees, and Allan was accepted, taking his life onto a different trajectory.
Later, when he was being ordered to go to China, he again returned to the school desk – to learn the Mandarin language. He accepted China as a pathway to later make it to his desired destination – the U.S.
Meanwhile Allan gradually became more intrigued about the mysterious world over in the Far East.
“Arriving via Hong Kong was quite a sight, coming into this massive city, which is very New York-like. With my still provincial outlook, I really didn’t know Asia had such modern and large cities”.
His first posting was as Sales Executive & Assistant Branch Manager at the Qingdao Branch.
“And everything was so different; intriguing and mind-blowing. There was this sense of excitement. ‘I’m on an adventure now!’ And to this day, it hasn’t really left me; Asia is still an adventure.”
That also included Allan meeting his wife to-be, Dora, on his very first day in China!
“Looking back, about every ten years, I see myself in many ways as a transformed person; at different stages in life. And I think it’s very much the same for a company; it’s in constant evolution and change. So, from what was right some years ago, the market has changed substantially. Then companies need to adapt,” the Dane reflects.
“Initially you start young and “blue-eyed”, thinking the only way is up. I expected to retire within Maersk. Then you start seeing the mergers with various companies and their impact, of which Maersk had many.”
Allan’s “school” was the container business, which included mergers with the biggest and the second biggest companies in the world.
“At first, I saw it purely as a net positive for Maersk. But you gradually learn…”
There were backdoor deals, changes in corporate culture and more.
“A shift in company culture can be unwitting and take the leadership by surprise, or it can be by design as the company needs to realign and bring in new DNA for a change in direction.”
The Dane transitioned to Danfoss in that way: “They had brought in my former regional Maersk boss to inject more dynamism and he in turn brought me in to help accelerate that in the region.”
Among the lessons learned from his time with Maersk, was to view things from a customer’s point of view – as freight forwarders were eroding the shipping companies’ margins year after year, offering short-term wins while losing the customer interface and intimacy for the carrier but viewed from a customer’s vantage point, the forwarders offered convenience.
“The customer turned to a shipping line who’s got one weekly sailing from a particular port for instance. If they missed that week’s cut off, they would then either have to wait one more week, or deal with a forwarder instead, who could offer another carrier three hours later, or the next day etc. – so that’s an unbeatable value proposition. As a carrier with fixed sailings, one then had to innovate to come up with other unique value propositions for customers.”
“I later came to realise that such aggregators actually do add a lot of value across many different industries so one has to reconcile with that and keep what is best for the customer in mind, while ensuring that the business is profitable and keeps innovating and adding value,” he reflects.
Allan held various positions within Maersk in Asia; in China, and then in Jakarta, followed by Singapore – as Senior Director for Customer Service. That was the first time Maersk had a head of customer service in a region; something Allan had spotted was neglected following big mergers and had been singled out to address within the business. The developments that South East Asia built for customer service, gained much attention at the headquarters and led to creation of a global head of customer service.
However, Maersk Line wasn’t doing well globally around the time of the Global Financial Crisis in 2007-08 and a reorganisation sent thousands of Maersk expats, including Allan, back to Denmark. There to an extent he felt like a stranger in a strange land: “I had already been abroad for too many years. And I longed to get back to my Asia.”
Exit to Danfoss
He took an exit after 18 proud years with the company, where he felt he had been able to have a big impact and help build a bridge especially between East and West.
Then, through good fortune he managed to get back to Asia, along with three kids – having landed a position at Danfoss as Senior Director, Head of Asia-Pacific Region Global Services, in 2012.
“And once again, I felt this sense of awe, inspiration and excitement; with appreciation of history and modernity in a unique blend full of opportunity, and of being back as an expat in a very welcoming country where one is always treated a little different in a highly positive way.”
His mission: “Following a bit of turbulence in a couple of countries in the region, it was very important for the head office to have a representative out in the field that they saw as an impeachable character with strong ethics, who would think long-term and ensure we operated in a compliant manner”.
“Danfoss was somewhat low-key at the time; everything seemed to me to run a bit under the radar, just getting by and on the whole not acting very self-confident which I found odd, being Denmark’s largest industrial company with an exciting portfolio of world leading solutions that were desirable for customers across almost all industries. Silo thinking also prevailed in Danfoss at the time. There wasn’t any holistic idea about where we should head with the region. I called us ‘The Forgotten Region,’” he recalls. In other words, there were plenty of challenges.
Allan set up regional quarterly meetings amongst the leaders in the different divisions. “Notwithstanding my more internal role in global services, my commercial background and Asia experience, and the fact that I on and off was the only Danish Danfoss employee in the region always afforded me an opportunity to meet customers and important stakeholders and play a unique role as DNA bearer for Danfoss in the region.”
“While the individual division chiefs didn’t have much to do with one another, my service division was the connection binding things together. As I saw how they repeatedly weren’t really collaborating, despite rather obvious overlooked synergies, I increasingly voiced attention to this challenge and was very pleased to see Danfoss start moving in a more collaborative direction by establishing regions and new leadership roles.”
“We grew very substantially but Covid-19 slowed things down and put a spanner in the works. What we had experimented with in Asia, had by then become a global thing that everybody had to do, but with the new global realities and slowdown, we couldn’t decisively land the quantum leap that had been envisaged and then the pendulum swung once again.”
Allan had by then moved out of global services and back into a customer-facing role as Danfoss Malaysia’s first GM in over twenty years. Later he took the reins of SEA-North (Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam) but the pendulum swung at the end of 2024, when a big strategic change meant that the regional President and country GM roles were dissolved. So, then he looked for a new role and was in a very timely manner hired by the storied German firm Meiko Clean Solutions, as MD for MEIKO’s South East Asia and Korea operations.
Looking back at a “highly satisfying career” in Danfoss, marrying strategy and front line execution across Asia, Allan notes that, the Danish energy-efficiency expert – in part thanks to hard and smart work as well as strategic mergers – grew from a couple hundred employees in the region to closer to 1,000 and a very significant scale-up in sales and impact on customers, over the years.
“I think undeniably there was a cultural change during this time, where the employees got a lot closer to the customers, and turned more commercially driven, a lot more aggressive in terms of the growth and in terms of thinking of the customers. So, we grew a lot in this period of time, in more ways than one.”
Dishwashing and food waste solutions
Meiko is an established player within B2B dishwashing solutions and has a 98-year history.
“Meiko was also in change mode, not looking to get somebody from the industry doing more of what they had already been doing. Meiko wanted a change.”
And as things has turned out there is also a common thread among Allan’s three employers he has had while in Asia: They are all European foundation-controlled companies with around a century or more of global history and all with long-term thinking with an industry leader mindset and a focus on sustainability. As for Meiko, two things really attracted him.
When its founder passed away his wife continued running the show and set up a foundation to run it in perpetuity: “Meiko can never be sold and has to remain for the good of the local community in Offenburg. And we think in generations; not in quarters,” noted the Dane.
Similarly, the origins of the Maersk company are deeply rooted in the Danish Møller family, with unique ownership structure involving family-controlled foundations, where ownership and leadership have passed down through five generations.
In the case of Danfoss the business has remained family-owned, via a family-controlled foundation.
“One of the great privileges of my life was when Chairman emeritus, Jørgen Mads Clausen and his wife Anette came to Asia in late 2012 and stayed in the region for more than a month-long holiday. As they invited me to travel with them on parts of the journey I got to know him well, finding that this very well-known business man is very down-to-earth and approachable.”
Allan then also managed to arrange multiple minister visits, along with customer- as well a Danish Embassies and import industry stakeholder meetings.
“It became somewhat of a working holiday for the Clausen’s but I am sure it was unforgettable for them as well. That inspired me to really want to work my hindside off for Danfoss. Mr Clausen doesn’t care about the billions; he cares about what positive impact the business has on the world.”
“In Danfoss sustainability isn’t something that is done separately; it is the business. Danfoss is a part of the solution; not the problem. And I myself became greener and greener in my thinking and private life as I worked in Danfoss, and have become fiercely proud of what I’ve been doing professionally.”
Therefore, he was also happy to discover that his new employer, through its Meiko Green division, offers a food-waste treatment solution which is already well deployed in Singapore and holds much promise across Asia. Food Waste is a big contributor to global warming and holds much promise in turning a problem into a future resource.
“And in the latest generation of dishwashers, the water consumption was cut almost by half. The electricity consumption was also cut, using inverters and heat recovery which I’m very familiar with from my Danfoss time. So, Meiko is a company that pushes the bar on energy efficiency, on reducing water consumption and on offering people friendly solutions with great ergonomics.”
Great life satisfaction and inspiration from extracurricular activities
“Apart from my job roles, I have been involved in so many extracurricular activities over time; various chambers of commerce organisations, Overseas Shipowners Association, Toastmasters and more. I came to realise at an early age that while I held busy and demanding roles in my professional life, it was often through extracurricular activities, helping others in a voluntary effort, that I found great life satisfaction and inspiration. This has played a big part in the adventure and excitement that I have felt, and continue to feel, on my journey in Asia.”
Allan is proud of the near twelve years he served on the board of DanCham Malaysia first as Board Member from 2012 and then as Chairman from 2015 until 2024 and in between, a good seven years as board director on EuroCham Malaysia.
While Danish-related businesses have a very long and successful history in Malaysia, Allan believes that many more – especially SME:s – could benefit from establishing themselves in Malaysia.
“Not only is this a market in its own right; in fact, more sophisticated than many people realise and posed for take-off on many aspects including increased focus on sustainability and circularity. But Malaysia also offers a well-educated base with remarkably low costs for such a well-developed nation and it could play an even bigger role for Danish companies who require IT-savvy staff, or delve in robotics or need engineering services.”
“And for companies seeking a stable and predictable, low-cost but sophisticated and well-regulated market as a port of entry to Asia, whether they do regional distribution and management, or back-office services or even manufacturing; Malaysia is among the very best options available now,” adds Allan.
For him, since language and legal systems in Malaysia are plug-and-play for Danish companies, Malaysia is a rather obvious and easy gateway to tap into Asia in this, the Asian century, with “almost unlimited opportunities.”
“As I reflect on my life to date, I feel very fortunate that Maersk opened my eyes to the world. I have gone from being a naïve and content Dane growing up in the 80’s with a vey provincial outlook, to being a proud citizen of the world, with a family with a very international outlook. My kids live in three different countries and have been fortunate to attend excellent schools across Asia and Europe. I have a strong sense of agency and I love having a foot in both Europe and Asia – helping to bridge gaps and understanding. It has afforded my family and me a very exciting life and as the journey continues, I can think of no better place to be than in Malaysia, truly Asia, as I continue this third act in my life.
