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Being the client its focus, quality management has become an essential subject for
the company: the proper and due delivery of its products and the achievement of
an operational excellence, in pursuit of high productivity and efficiency standards,
are subjects that achieve new importance today due to the corporate promise of the
company.
This has resulted in a sustained growth of five years for SQM, during which it has
doubled its sales reaching almost US$ 1,000 millions. Such growth will allow the
company to invest in order to improve its productive capacity during the next three
years, which will increase its participation in markets to respond to the strong
and increasing demand for its products.
The company also makes permanent efforts to favour the quality of its products:
it pursuits a continuous improvement in manufacturing, marketing and distribution
processes; it is concerned about meeting the requirements provided by international
regulations for the products it commercialises and it makes sure that all laboratories
of SQM have duly validated analytical methodologies, both physical and chemical,
to keep an adequate control of its finished products. The development and implementation
of a Management Quality System has been an essential instrument for the progress
in this matter.
A proof of such progress, is the certification under the ISO 9001:2000 standard,
which has been implemented by SQM in the lithium carbonate plant and its iodine
plants in Nueva Victoria and Pedro de Valdivia.
But today, SQM wants to go further. It aims at a goal that transcends the
simple delivery of quality products: it expects to furnish the need of its customers
with appropriate business formulae, based on the knowledge and wide experience of
the company. More than excellent products, SQM wants to offer them a full service,
based on its real and deep interest in the growth of their businesses, which today
is its new reason to exist.
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