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Chemspec Europe 2010

Ville:

Berlin

Organisateur principal:

DMG

Entrepreneur:

Quartz BUSINESS MEDIA

Supporteur:

ECFG

Exposition:

Messe Berlin

Date des expositions mondiales:

2010-06-09 - 2010-06-10

Reçue:

Site:

Messe Berlin

  Is the market in recovery yet? We spoke with Europe’s leading fine chemicals companies at Chemspec Europe 2010

  Chemspec Europe 2010, which was held at Messe Berlin on 9 and 10 June, is the leading exhibition of the fine and speciality chemicals industries. As ever, most of the major players in Europe were there as exhibitors and the mood was generally upbeat, though with sometimes sharply different feedback depending on which industries companies mainly serve.

  Exemplifying the positive mood after an awful year for the chemicals industry in 2009, the exhibition floor space was about 15% larger in Berlin than at the 2009 show in Barcelona. Total attendance figures are yet to be verified but are estimated to have been about 10% up; the total number of unique visitors on the first and busier day was 2,768.

  Chemspec is a horizontal show, where exhibitors showcase diversified chemistry capabilities to a very wide range of industries. The life sciences are clearly the most important and the addition of the Pharmaspec area since 2008, uniting suppliers of APIs and other pharma-specific products and services, has drawn in some important new visitors from the pharmaceuticals sector.

  That said, Chemspec also has visitors from many other sectors. Amongst those mentioned by those interviewed in the final hours at Berlin were flavours and fragrances, personal care, industrial cleaning, water treatment, dyes and colours, electronics, speciality additives, photographic and imaging, photovoltaics, polymers and general industrial chemicals.

  The vast majority of those we spoke to were content with the results of the show–in some cases, they were hopeful of specific projects that, if fruitful, could pay in full for their presence in Berlin–and were also more optimistic about the state of the market. Mostly their feedback came out of pre-planned meetings with existing customers, though passing traffic still had a part to play.

  “It’s been one of the busiest shows we’ve had,”said Dr Jim Birnie of Sumitomo Chemical Europe.“We have had as many meetings as we usually do; the difference has been that there have been a lot more spot calls and it has all been far more intense than before.”

  Laurent Naraf, international business director for Azelis, a major distributor in the field, put it even more succinctly:“Very good, very busy, very crowded. We have had a lot of positive meetings and are very positive.”

  Agrochemicals are probably the area where Chemspec is at its strongest and almost all of the major contract manufacturers to the industry were present. In recent years, the crop protection industry had undergone something of a revival, to the benefit of all of its suppliers, but this clearly petered out in late 2009.

  All major suppliers agreed that the major producers had overestimated their supply needs and consequently began major destocking in Q1, causing a significant dampening effect on demand. Moreover, Europe’s coldest winter in 30 years meant that far fewer insects, fungi and weeds needed to be killed in the spring of 2010.

  According to some observers, one of the two largest agrochemicals companies, Bayer CropScience, has been seeking to reduce its debts from€14 billion to€10 billion following an internal study by Accenture. A major part of this has been a concerted move to drive down working capital, in part by changing payment terms to suppliers.

  In an industry where the top six originators account for 70-80% of the market, this has been having a marked effect all round, though some suppliers have been resisting the change. The other single largest player, Syngenta, which holds a supplier event at most Chemspec Europe shows and did again in Berlin, appears to have a more stable situation, though it too has destocked heavily.

  In the longer term, however, most of the mega-trends favour increased use of crop protection products. Increased meat consumption in emerging markets, particularly China, increased land use for biofuels with financial aid from governments and above all a world population that appears certain to hit 9 billion by 2050 all point in the same direction.

  Agrochemicals is a major strength for Lanxess’s custom manufacturing arm, Saltigo, which only last month announced a major investment at its main site in Leverkusen, Germany. However, this was not the main emphasis at the company’s constantly busy stand in Berlin.

  “Our second focus has been very much on what we call the‘chemicals-consuming’industries and we had a lot of meetings with potential customers in this field, including some very big groups,”said Dirk Sandri, head of marketing and sales for Saltigo’s Agro & Specialty Chemicals Business Line.

  Added Sandri:“We are not looking for applications but offering our technology to whoever needs to run a synthesis that we can help with. Outsourcing has not traditionally been seen as a strategic option outside the life sciences, but companies here increasingly want to make their costs more variable.”

  Another important point for Saltigo was to stress to potential customers that it does not just offer multi-step synthesis. For this reason, its pre-show publicity particularly highlighted single-step capabilities in distillation and hydrogenation, both of which are also carried out at Leverkusen.

  WeylChem is, like Saltigo, stronger in agro than any other field, though its stand at Chemspec Europe 2010 also showcased its many capabilities in pharma and non-life science fields. Indeed, said managing director Georg Weichselbaumer, the company specifically agreed not to meet its biggest customers, most of whom are from agro, at Berlin, so that it could spend its time targeting new potential customers.

  Having spent several years buying fine chemicals assets, WeylChem’s owner ICIG is now focusing on ways of operating. The various subsidiaries, including Miteni, PCC, Corden PharmaChem and Synkem as well as WeylChem, will continue to operate as stand alone entities and will maintain their well-established identities, but there will he changes.

  “We will be looking at joint marketing to present a single face to the customer and explore how best to exploit our technical capabilities in a co-ordinated way,”explained Tomas Hainich, who has been charged with implementing this.“We aim to avoid duplication of effort and to exploit synergies without losing their entrepreneurial drive.”

  Like many other European fine chemicals firms, WeylChem has also noted certain customers hurt by bad experiences in China being prepared to pay more for reliable Western supply.“It’s not quite a trend yet, but a few are doing this. In this industry, relationships are built on how you deal with problems,”Hainich said.

  AllessaChemie reported a strong show, with more traffic than expected from across the board. As in previous years, the Frankfurt-based firm was focusing on its key areas of strength–industrial products, then agro, then pharma–with an increasing emphasis on its newly developed line products to balance the ups and downs of custom manufacturing.

  Management board member Dr Lukas von Hippel echoed others about the destocking process in agro. In pharma, he added, the number of accessible projects was down but the quality was better than before; certainly there is a tendency for originators to step into generics, greatly changing their expectations of suppliers.

  The key new trend in von Hippel’s eyes is what he called‘the logistics of material flow’. Instead of focusing on the price of a given product, companies have an increasingly strong insight into logistics as well. They are trying to simplify and shorten supply chains.

  “This involves sourcing locally but it goes deeper than that; it involves building networks and getting the local suppliers to source locally too,”von Hippel commented.“It may not be a trend yet but it is starting, and it is something we have been working on for the past two to three years by forming alliances for special projects.”

  Lonza was one of the major players to return to Chemspec Europe in Berlin after many years away. Other important returnees included DSM, Evonik Industries, Almac Sciences, Siegfried, DKSH and the Dishman Group. Lonza, however, was stressing its ISO-regulated businesses rather than the pharma-biotech side that increasingly dominates its activities.

  “We have seen a lot of visitors, despite taking the decision to exhibit quite late,”noted Dr Michael Helwig, head of custom manufacturing for industrial specialities and life science ingredients.“As well as pre-booked meetings, we are seeing a lot of people who knew us already but would not have seen us if we hadn’t had the booth”.

  This part of Lonza’s business is balanced between custom manufacturing, where financial impacts tend to lag about six months behind market trends, and catalogue products, which tend to follow them more directly. In 2009, Helwig said, the latter had suffered badly while the former did“extremely well”; this year, the situation has been reversed to some degree as the results of cancelled and delayed projects work their way through the system.

  “Agrochemicals gave us a boom for two and a half years when we needed it, but it could not go on forever and 2011 could be difficult too,”said Dr Tony Bastock, group managing director of Contract Chemicals, a small independent firm based in the UK, whose business is about 40:40:20 between agro, pharma and others.“Pharma is very mature and more steady.”

  Finland’s KemFine is also strongest in agro. Materials manager Taisto Harvala said that the company had a productive show based on pre-planned meeting.“Agro is not as strong as it was in, say, 2008, but we haven’t been hit too hard,”he added. However, there have been reports in the local press that the company’s former Avecia facility in Grangemouth, Scotland, is being offered for sale.

  Away from agro, France’s PCAS came to Berlin after two very difficult years in 2008 and 2009, with major volume falls in pharmaceuticals, cosmetics and fragrances. Now, however, said Didier Schneider, business unit and strategy director, it is seeing an equally strong rebound. 2010 is not likely to be as good as 2008 and some trends are difficult to discern but the general feel is far more positive.

  Chemie Uetikon of Germany is more pharma-focused than most Chemspec exhibitors and was particularly showcasing new capabilities that enable customers to take projects requiring low temperature reactions right through to pilot scale. Commercial director Dr Hendrik Baumann said that API business was“excellent”, though some areas of fine chemicals, intermediates and generics were still slow.

  Also quite bullish was Dr Klaus Stingl, head of key accounts and commercial management for NAFTA and Asia in the Exclusive Synthesis business of Evonik Industries, which took a stand in the Pharmaspec area after many years away. “Business in general is good, we have not been significantly affected by the crisis and have made a lot of progress,”he said.

  The most significant recent development has been the acquisition of the Tippecanoe Laboratories site in Lafayette, Indiana, from Eli Lilly. This brought with it a long-term deal to supply Lilly with APIs, while also further developing the contract manufacturing business for pharma.

  A common concern among exhibitors was the lack of visibility going forward. Whilst most agree that the worst is over, it may be too soon to speak of a recovery and no-one expected the overall market in 2010 to be as good as 2008, even allowing that the downturn began in Q4 2008. Some hoped 2011 might be the real turning point.

  “Customers are reluctant to commit more than six months to a year in advance,”noted Sebastien Poncet of Minakem, who is now the director of the Minasolve subsidiary that seeks out new opportunities away from pharma. As a result, he said, suppliers need to manage their own demand - and indeed their recruitment - very carefully; business, however, is stronger for companies like Minakem that have gained critical mass.

  “For a lot of people, 2009 was a shock and now people are reluctant to commit until they are 200% sure–then when they do commit their need is more immediate,”said François Baduel of Axyntis, a more diversified French group that emerged from the break-up of Orgasynth.

  The company’s business in general is much better than in 2009 and it has succeeded in reducing debt significantly. After a good Q1, April was slow but May and June had looked brighter.“We expect 2011 to be a good year, we have five to ten projects that could really grow up, and not just in pharma,”Baduel said.

Contact:

John Lane

Tel:

+44 (0) 1737 855 076

Fax:

+44 (0) 1737 855 418

E-mail:

JohnLane@quartzltd.co.uk

Http:

http://www.chemspecevents.com