Review of 2nd ICIS World Surfactant Conference
NYC - April 25th and 26th, 2012
I was again very pleased to be able to co-produce and chair the third surfactant conference in our series with ICIS. This time, we upgraded and expanded our venue - at the Grand Hyatt, Jersey City, with a stunning view across the Hudson River of the Manhattan skyline.
200 friends and colleagues from all parts of the surfactant value chain spent one and a half days listening to outstanding speakers and networking with each other in the breaks and drinks reception. The proceedings were reported in ICIS Chemical Business and, of course, in Doris De Guzman's outstanding Green Blog, which live-tweeted essentially the entire conference. A special mention should also go to our friend Sarah Gorback at Elsevier, who tweeted extensively and was instrumental in supporting our partnership with "Focus on Surfactants" newsletter to which all delegates received a free subscription.
Here, I make a point or two regarding each of the speakers and hopefully give you a flavor of the type of event that we will produce coming up in Budapest, September 13th and 14th at the First ICIS European Surfactants Conference. Some of the links in my notes below may require a subscription to ICIS in order to view.
Keynote speaker, Mark Miller of BASF, gave a wide-ranging overview of that company's challenges and opportunities in the field, pointing out that a balanced portfolio of renewable and petrochemical feedstocks is essential to the BASF's success. He noted that refined EO is tight in the USA and speculated on who would take the plunge to invest accordingly.
Our M&A Speaker this time was the well known investment banker, Peter Young of Young and Partners. M&A activity is slowing according to Peter. The shaping of our industry, however, by M&A is likely to continue as opportunities for M&A abound in the surfactant value chain.
Martin Herrington of IP Specialties gave a stimulating and thought provoking overview of the fatty alcohol market, pointing out that "natural " products' growth may be hard to sustain in the face of cheap shale gas and ethylene in North America.
Next up was the widely known expert on EO, Doug Rightler, who proceeded to give a beginner's crash course and advanced level seminar on EO economics - all compressed into 40 minutes. A highly rated speaker and sought after consultant, we were fortunate to have him speak at our event.
In the tradition of breaking some news at our conferences, Harish Davey of Reliance came to the podium and announced Reliance's entry into the surfactants market in India - in order to support their growing consumer products and retail business. This is a huge piece of news and we were honored that Reliance chose our conference to announce it first.
After lunch, Victor Zubb of WheatOleo (a Soliance company) reviewed some interesting new developments in I&I cleaning ingredients. Biomass from wheat used in sophorolipid surfactants for I&I.
Rhodia's speaker, Chris Houston (new to the company and a veteran of the industry) delivered some novel insights the oil and gas field and its importance for surfactants. Overall the oilfield chemicals market is worth $53Billion (!)
L'Oreal's Jeanne Chang gave us a look inside the raw material innovations at the major global personal care company. She referenced the company's adoption of the 12 principles of green chemistry and the outstanding work in glycoside chemistry in the Proxylane range of anti-aging products.
Heliana Kola of the Battelle Memorial Institute generated substantial discussion and debate around her presentation on the ingredients in laundry detergents in North and South America. Quite astounding, the impact of enzymes on the level of surfactants used in detergents.
Our focus on Latin America was kicked off by Todd Nelmark of Oxiteno. His survey of the surfactants markets in Mexico and Latin America was simply unique for a market heretofore little analyzed deeper than the macro level.
Colombia'a emerging palm industry was the focus of our next presentation. Colombia is the fourth largest palm producing country in the world, behind Malaysia and Indonesia (natch) and Thailand. Monica Perez was a stand-in speaker at the last minute and really opened our delegates eyes to the potential right here in the Americas for palm derivatives. Colombia is clearly in the running to be the "next Malaysia" just a few hours flight from Houston.
Wrapping up the first day, was Jim Heaney of Colgate, who gave us an encouraging but realistic assessment of the political challenges in South America, especially in Argentina and Venezuela and the cost pressures of doing business in the region where customers appreciate renewability but will not pay extra for it.
Opening up day two of the conference, I set the stage for the "What it Takes" mini-conference which took its name from a book by Richard Ben Cramer about the 1988 US presidential race. The book looks at the then candidates, Bush Sr., Dole, Dukakis, Hart, Gephardt and Biden and tracks the campaign through the lens of who really has what it takes to become president of the USA. In the same way, on our second day, we focused in on the leading new technologies in the surfactant supply chain and invited the delegates to consider who, if any, among them really has what it takes to impact our industry and become the "third leg" of the supply chain stool alongside petrochemical and oleochemical feedstocks. To tee up the discussion, we invited P&G and Seventh Generation to relate from their perspective what it takes to get an ingredient into their consumer products and onto the supermarket shelf.
After the challenge was laid down by P&G and 7th Generation, first into the lion's den was Tim Dummer of Solazyme, a favorite of prior conferences, who reported on the continued solid progress of the company in commercializing engineered oil derived from sugars via the action of heterotrophic algae. THe company's first plant in Brazil is slated for start-up in the second half of 2013.
Next up, Wei Huang of LS-9 described the company's one-step conversion of sugars directly into oleochemicals, via enzymatic routes. A different approach to that of Solazme and very interesting to our delegates.
Another ICIS conference, regular, Elevance, then took the stage to update the group on their progress with their two announced bio-refineries, 180KMT/yr in Indonesia and 270 KMT/yr in the US. Ambiitious goals for their blend of commodity olefins and specialty building blocks derived via metathesis of vegetable oils.
BIll Rothwell of Codexis, a newcomer the ICIS conference speaker circuit, but with deep experience in the global surfactant supply chain, spoke next. They are entering the market for fatty alcohols with their Codexol brand product made from sugars via a microbial route.
My colleague, Patrick Foley, was next with a change of pace, getting in-depth with some novel, patented chemistry that has formed the basis of a brand new 6 month old company, P2 Science. P2 is commercializing a range of specialty ingredients, both novel and drop-in, for consumer products.
Last to enter the arena to convince the crowd that they had what it takes, was Amyris, ably represented by Frederik Ngatung. Amyris synthetic biology platform seeks to employ the versatile farnesene intermediate to enter the fatty alcohols market in the near future.
In summary, I can say that I have never enjoyed myself more at an industry event. It was again and honor to chair a meeting as content-rich and important as this and I hope the delegates got as much out of it as I did. Registration for Budapest , September 13 & 14th is open now. I am told the venue is outstanding and that we will sell it out. I hope to see more friends and colleagues there.