Case Study: How a Chemical Materials Exporter Entered Southeast Asia
The company
A Chinese titanium dioxide manufacturer with strong domestic sales and one export market (India). Wanted to diversify into Southeast Asia — Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia — where paint and plastics manufacturing was booming.
The problem
No contacts in the region. Industry databases returned generic “chemical company” listings that were useless for targeting actual buyers. The company’s attempts to find distributors via agents and brokers produced no traction in 6 months.
What we did
1. Application-based discovery. Instead of “chemical companies in Vietnam,” we searched for the actual consumers of TiO2: paint manufacturers, plastics compounders, coatings formulators. 800 targets identified.
2. Import-signal filtering. Companies that had recently imported similar materials, expanded capacity, or posted procurement roles were prioritized.
3. Localized outreach. Emails in Vietnamese, Thai, and Indonesian — handled by POLALEAD’s multilingual AI. First lines referenced each company’s specific production processes.
4. Documentation-first follow-up. COA, MSDS, and regulatory documents provided in the sequence — critical for chemical buyers.
The results
- 31% open rate, 5.8% reply rate
- 14 qualified conversations with plant-level procurement
- 3 trial orders shipped within 5 months
- Two distributors signed after 7 months
How this applies to you
Chemical materials buyers are findable — you just have to search by application, not by label. See our chemical materials lead generation playbook, or let POLALEAD run it.