Piya Chongvatana

Piya Chongvatana is president, Patkol Public Co. Ltd., Bangkok, Thailand.  He built the first food quality tube ice making machine in Thailand. Today, his company is one of the two largest manufacturers of tube ice makers in the world. Chongvatana’s other product lines include stainless steel evaporative condensers, spiral freezers, tray tunnel freezers and continuous fluidized bed freezers, among others used in breweries and seafood and milk processing plants. He designed the largest poultry processing plant in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations where some 500,000 chickens are frozen each day. In 2004, he received the Thailand Outstanding Technologist Award from the Foundation for the Promotion of Science and Technology, which is the first time the award was given to someone outside the civil service.