Homogeneity by degree

Walk down most UK High Streets these days and you can be forgiven for not knowing where you are in the country. Such is the homogeneity of shop names and designs that only the local accents on the street will tell you whether you're north, south, east or west.

In a similar vein, the global chemical industry is taking on its own degree of homogeneity as the leading producers, and their equally global engineering contractors, build replica plants anywhere in the world to meet the vagaries of their markets.

In emerging and rapidly growing economies, such as China and India, this 'off-the-shelf' approach to project engineering is only to be expected. But countries with more established chemical industries can still call on their own traditional technologies to hold back the tide of globalisation.

In Japan's case, the flood of carbon-copy process technologies could even be reversed if the country's expertise in biotechnology is successfully exported. The Japanese government has lent its support to research into the industrial use of microbes, with the METL industrial ministry estimating that by 2007 some 10% of the nation's chemical production could be achieved via enzyme-mediated processes.

Ambitious though this target is, microbial research has led to some significant successes, such as Mitsubishi Rayon's 30 000tpa acrylamide plant in Yokohama, based on a process far removed from conventional chemistry.

Why are Japanese process engineers seemingly more adept at this type of lateral thinking than their counterparts in western companies?

According to Andy Wells of AstraZeneca, who was part of a recent DTI GlobalWatch mission to Japan, it's partly a cultural issue reflected in the different ways of working.

As he points out, 'in the UK, it's still quite rare for the organic chemists to talk to the engineers.' Now that would be a cultural change to contemplate.