3/2013 March REACH Chemicals The European Commission’s THE NEWSPAPER FOR THE Combining performance and REACh Review received a mixed sustainability is the big deal response from industry and NGOs CHEMICAL AND in the coatings sector © Tanja Bagusat - Fotolia.com LIFE SCIENCE MARKETS © frank peters - Fotolia.com Page 4 Pages 9–11 N EWSFLOW M&A-News Kemira sold its 39% stake in German Science Driven By the Market TiO2 producer Sachtleben for €97.5 million to its joint venture partner, US holding Rockwood. CEO Patrick Thomas Takes a New Approach to Innovation at BMS Monsanto acquires Israeli crop bio-engineering company Rosetta Materials – When new company he had to convince the Bayer hold- Green for $35 million. ing’s chief financial officer that the chieftains say they want to be a cata- More on Pages 2-7 ▶ targets were achievable. Over six lyst for change, many listeners brush it years, Thomas and his financial Companies off as a tired cliché. Patrick Thomas is team have reduced working capital Evonik is taking aim at a stock mar- by €500 million, and “we now have ket launch for the fourth time since proof that it needn’t be. Stepping into benchmark working capital across 2008. After the aborted attempt in his new role as chairman and CEO of the entire company.” June 2012 to publicly place 30% of A pet project of the new chief ex- Bayer MaterialScience (BMS) in 2007, shares, observers now give the Ger- ecutive was establishing strict cash man specialty chemicals company the then 49-year-old Englishman who Our mantra is discipline, which turned out not as better odds of succeeding. previously had led the polyurethanes more innovation, easy a sell internally as it might have More on Page 3 ▶ been. The reason, Thomas believes, businesses of ICI and Huntsman in the less administration. was that “at a company like Bayer Investments UK and Belgium quickly went to work with a fabulous credit rating, it was not a natural thing to think about.” Shell is upgrading its Singapore holding the old German company’s production facility for polyols by But coming from a highly leveraged more than 100,000 t/y and adding cherished traditions and practices up company like Huntsman, he found new grades. The project is due for to the light for scrutiny while contem- it essential. “If you manage cash completion in 2014. well, you can manage other things plating new business models. well.” Over the past decade, Bayer’s More on Pages 3-7▶ polymers business has generated €3 billion in cash. Unlike some plastics Pharma After six years in the job, many chief companies, “we have been cash pos- Biogen is paying its Irish partner executives might be tempted to de- itive even in recession years.” Elan $3.25 billion plus future royal- clare “Mission Accomplished” and A new concept Thomas’s man- ties to claim full ownership of the fall back into a more comfortable agement team has introduced is blockbuster multiple sclerosis drug operating mode. This thought would the global “non-touch order,” which Tysabri. not occur naturally to Patrick Thom- if one day applied broadly could Lonza has been awarded a contract as. The Portsmouth native and Ox- revolutionize buying and selling. to generate induced pluripotent ford graduate who calls himself “an From call-off to invoicing and cash stem cells for research purposes engineer by birth and by training” collection, no human hand touches by the U.S. National Institutes of is still far from finished reshaping the process. For the bulk of the port- Health Center for Regenerative folio, total automation is not yet in Medicine. the polymer producer’s approach to innovation and marketing – two Patrick Thomas, CEO, Bayer MaterialScience sight. However, in the US, where More on Pages 3-7 ▶ concepts that in his mind go hand the system was developed and first in hand. ade. “You cannot radically change vesting heavily, for example, in ber of innovative new technologies launched, around 60% of custom- Collaborations Having scarcely paused to catch the culture of a 150-year-old com- China”. In the past, all businesses developed in-house, such as the ers who regularly order the same Richter, the Hungarian drug maker, his breath since arriving in Lev- pany,” he remarks. “What we’ve ba- were run from Germany. Under his gas-phase route to polyurethane products, without price negotiation has formed a 51:49 marketing joint erkusen, Thomas blogs relentlessly, sically done is to take Bayer’s tech- aegis, headquarters of the global feedstock TDI and the new energy- – polyurethane systems, for example venture in China with its marketing sparking dialog throughout the Bay- nical dreams and push them out into polycarbonate business was relo- saving oxygen depolarized cathode – are now using it. partner Rxmidas Pharmaceuticals. er worldwide social media commu- reality.” cated to the People’s Republic, the (ODC) chlorine process. “We had the process designed in More on Page 3 ▶ nity. Covering topics ranging from At BMS, polycarbonate, polyure- center of the market. One of the last Before making bold strategic the US, because Americans are usu- finance to sustainability and points thanes and their production chains, to launch a major platform there, moves, new managers often must ally more efficient,” says Thomas. Southeast Asia in between, his community, simply along with coatings raw materials, “we are now the largest foreign tighten internal nuts and bolts. Sev- Europeans might have made it too The regional focus in this issue called “Patrick” has 14,000 follow- are the stuff technical dreams are eral such tasks awaited Thomas at complex.” Around 20-30% of Eu- highlights the emerging econo- ers – the most in the company. “It’s made of. The €11.5 billion plastics Bayer MaterialScience. Overhaul- ropean and Asian customers have mies of Southeast Asia. an effective way of communicating,” portfolio, custom-designed when About 70% of ing accounting procedures was an now adapted the system, 12% in while sitting in his office and chat- Bayer’s plastics business was split early challenge. “We had the most Latin America. Besides simplifying More on Pages 6, 8 ▶ ting with CHEManager Europe’s between MaterialScience and spin- what scientists do complicated SAP system in the and speeding orders, the system is Dede Williams. Since mid-2011, off Lanxess in 2005, was “put to- should be driven world,” he recalls. The world mar- cheaper for the company as well as Plastics Thomas has also dedicated a por- gether very intelligently,” the CEO ket leader for company software the customers, he says. The bonan- Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC) has come by the market. tion of his seemingly boundless en- says. BMS kept the two most ver- usually uses traffic light colors to za in Asia was especially tangible. a long way since its inventor in ergy to another “interesting job” as satile polymers, with bread and rate internal corporate procedures. “When we went live, the auditors 1913. PVC’s journey to becoming president of the European industry butter materials such as PA , PBS company, wholly owned, with a “For us they had to add a fourth reduced our bill by several million the world’s third largest-selling association Plastics Europe (until and ABS (the latter business sub- market capitalization of $3 billion. color, black, for processes they dollars because we made their job plastic has not always been easy. June 2014). sequently was sold to Ineos) going And we’re also “the biggest and couldn’t interpret.” Today, BMS easier. The money saved is being in- More on Pages 12-14 ▶ Sipping Diet Coke from a polycar- to Lanxess. most cost-effective.” operates with one set of processes vested in R&D.” bonate glass while scrolling through “From the outset, BMS was de- New processes are now often globally. Regional differences are a As might be expected, BMS’ his laptop to find a video of a high signed as a growth business, and tested first in world-scale plants in thing of the past. approach to R&D under its Eng- tech application he wants to show, this is what what we have contin- China before world-scale facilities Another hurdle the first outsider lish chief executive diverges from Thomas reflects on the gentle cul- ued to do with it,” says Thomas. To are built in Europe and the rest of and non-German to run the com- that traditionally embraced by the tural metamorphosis at Bayer Ma- start with, “we have broadened the the world. in this way, the company pany had to surmount was reduc- German chemical and plastics in- terialScience over the past half dec- geographical basis enormously, in- has successfully leveraged a num- ing working capital. First, however, dustry. “Our mantra,” he says, is “more innovation, less administra- tion. Innovation is not just science and technology. It’s also about how you do business.” Applying one of his cherished concepts, industrial THE PORTAL AND marketing, to innovation at BMS DECISIVE NEWSPAPER FOR three years ago was a sea change INFORMATION and a learning process for most THE EUROPEAN employees. CHEMICALS AND “At Bayer, we are very good at chemanager - online.com /en invention,” Thomas asserts. While PHARMACEUTICAL manufacturers’ traditional approach MARKETS to invention is “to develop a prod- © Nmedia/fotolia uct and see if there’s a market, a better method, he says, is to go to the marketplace to find creative im- pulses that match the portfolio and · PF 11 05 64 · 69469 Weinheim · Pressepost · DPAG· Entgelt bezahlt · 78719 Entgelt · DPAG· · Pressepost Weinheim · PF 11 05 64 69469 business strategy.