A challenging future for the chemicals industry
3 Feb 2003
The UK chemicals industry is an industry in transition, facing key challenges on four fronts - its reputation, sustainable development, innovation, and skill levels.
This is the conclusion put forward by the Chemicals Innovation and Growth Team (CIGT), set up at the beginning last year by Lord Sainsbury to address the future competitiveness of the industry.
As the CIGT’s final report explains, the industry’s public perception is fundamental to its future survival and prosperity. Overwhelmingly, though, that perception is governed by the environmental performance and health impact of the industry’s products and processes. Improve those, it might be thought, and the industry’s reputation blossoms.
If only life were that simple. Sustainable development is, of course, also governed by environmental and health impacts. But to these must be added the industry’s effects on the economy and society - a triple ‘whammy’ that requires the industry ‘to be creative and innovative in its approach’, says the CIGT.
‘Many chemical companies are already making a substantial contribution to sustainable development,’ it says in the report, ‘but the industry as a whole lacks a consistent framework to describe the progress it is making.’ Part of the problem here is the sheer diversity of the UK chemical industry. The mergers, acquisitions and restructuring of recent years has resulted in an industry with no clear leader in the public’s eye. Yes, ICI is still around, but this former bellwether of the economy is now just one of a myriad of some 3500 operators, some very large, some very small.
As the CIGT says: ‘Today no single company is instantly recognised as providing leadership in the way that happened in the past.’
Which is why one of the first recommendations of the CIGT is the formation of the Chemistry Leadership Council. The CLC is to set up a series of groups specifically addressing those four main concerns - reputation, sustainable development, innovation and skills. As its title suggests, a Futures Group will address the longer-term issues of reputation, sustainable development and - of direct relevance to both - the thorny issue of self-regulation.
The Chemicals Innovation Centre will develop the industry’s view on national science and technology research priorities, and help promote the UK as a centre for new chemical companies.
But of all the proposed CLC groups, the Skills Network Group has something of a head start. One of its targets is to extend the remit of PICME - the Process Industries Centre for Manufacturing Excellence - which has just been granted additional funding by the DTI to continue its successful work of the past two years through to 2006. The CIGT suggested PICME’s focus should be on skills training in technical areas such as control engineering, process intensification and reliability, as well as commercial skills.
The chemical industry might be facing a difficult future - which industry isn’t? - but it has shown commendable speed and foresight in addressing its own challenges.
