InterviewBorealis prepared for plastics downturn

24 October 2007 14:11  [Source: ICIS news]

By Mark Watts

 

LONDON (ICIS news)--With a potential market downturn in the global plastics industry on the horizon, Borealis believes a focus on innovation is needed to weather the storm, the company’s future CEO Mark Garrett told ICIS news on Wednesday.

 

Speaking ahead of the company’s presentation at the K2007 plastics trade show in Dusseldorf, Garrett was confident the company’s new products would allow it to compete under more difficult market conditions.

 

“We’re expecting more market volatility in 2009 and 2010 with extra supply based on advantaged feedstock,” said Garrett. “We have to be very careful we don’t talk ourselves into a downturn, sometimes if you keep talking about it, it becomes a reality.”

 

Garrett said the company was focussing on building innovation centres and increasing innovation rates which “puts us a better important position to face a market downturn.”

 

The company is undergoing a scrap-and-build phase in Europe, taking down older plants and replacing them with new facilities which utilise Borealis’s Borstar process technology.

 

Borealis was on track to start up its 330,000 tonne/year Borstar polypropylene plant in Burghausen, Germany, by the end of the year, said Garrett, while it was also building a Borstar pilot plant in Schwechat, Austria.

 

Although Borealis sells its process technologies, Garrett said that “Borstar technology is so good, we don’t licence it to anyone else.”

 

Garrett will take over as CEO of Borealis in the New Year, replacing John Taylor, who he described as a key player in the global industry.

 

Garrett brings to the company experience from Ciba Specialty Chemicals and DuPont and said he would work hard on “getting things done” in his new role.

 

The board has also appointed a new vice president for base chemicals, Martin Kuzaj, which Garrett said was part of a drive to create a second leg of the business in hydrocarbons, aromatics and the recently acquired company, Agrolinz Melamine International (AMI).

 

“We’re going to take a good hard look at (these businesses) and work out where it is we want to go,” he added.

 

Borealis is a major European polyolefins producer currently going through a large expansion in Abu Dhabi in the Middle East.

 

Last year it moved its headquarters to Vienna, Austria from Denmark’s capital, Copenhagen.

By: Mark Watts
+44 20 8652 3214

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