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.

2011/12 – Neil A Burns LLC, Review & Outlook

Surfactants and Oleochemicals

As regular readers know, this does not purport to be a journalistic blog. We leave that to the talented and industrious like Doris de Guzman of ICIS, whose work in the field of surfactants, green chemicals and oleochemicals journalism is oustanding.

Rather, what we do here is to comment occasionally on things that we find interesting and important from a personal perspective, given our involvement in the surfactant field:

The very first week of 2011 saw some announcements that were quite significant from a surfactant point of view. Shell signed an MOU with Qatar Petroleum for construction of, among other things, the world’s largest MEG plant (EO, a surfactant feedstock, is also a precursor of MEG). Bayer announced its interest in working with partners at its Martinsville, VA site to support building of a Marcellus Shale ethane fed ethylene cracker (downstream options being of course, EO and ethoxylates). Shell is a prime candidate.  Meanwhile in Poland, PCC Rokita consolidated its position as a leading producer in the region with an ethoxylation capacity expansion.  Later that month the BASF/Sinopec JV in Jiangsu China announced further capacity expansions in nonionic surfactants.

At 2011’s ACI meeting in Orlando, the talk was inevitably concerning the dizzying rise in surfactant feedstock prices – especially the lauric (C12/14) oils. Laurics continued on a tear of their own, finally peaking in the first week of March of 2011 as the laws of supply and demand worked and pricing came back into line. However, as many manufacturers will tell you, it is not so much the pricing level, but the volatility that really causes havoc. For these reasons, the keen interest shown in a “third leg to the supply chain” as we have called it here, manifested itself at ACI and continue throughout the year, with our friends Solazyme and Elevance having respectively completed and announced an IPO during the year. Both companies have had a significant impact already on the feedstock plans for some major surfactant producers and their importance in this market is set to grow.

Another major development at the ACI concerned the keen interest shown in the new ethoxylation technology launched by Desmet Ballestra of Italy. Projects are now underway worldwide, including in Japan, The Netherlands, Russia and  China. Intense interest in North America in ethoxylation capacity, no doubt fuelled in part by the Shale gas phenomenon (referenced above) is also driving a lot of work by Ballestra in this region. A mid-year summary of Ballestra’s activities in all of its key surfactant related technologies of sulfonation, ethoxylation and fatty alcohols is published here.

Our foray into the surfactant conference business got started in earnest in 2011. I had first approached ICIS Conferences in October of 2010 with the idea. We  then put together the First ICIS World Surfactant Conference in May of 2011 as a trial effort. This trial clearly tapped into a real industry need for a senior executive focused, commercial, “class-room style” conference, focusing in-depth on the key economic drivers of the surfactant industry. The conference sold out twice (moving to larger – but still cramped quarters) finally accommodating over 150 attendees. In addition to first-class keynotes from Pascal Juery of Rhodia and Kongkrapan Intarajang of Emery, the delegates were very impressed by the “new kids on the surfactant block”  – Solazyme and Elevance, who rounded out the day and a half with a riveting description of a surfactant world freed from a dependence on volatile and unpredictable oil markets (both petro and oleo).  Given the outstanding success of this first conference, ICIS and Neil A Burns LLC put together a business venture for the production of surfactant conferences throughout the world. We then quickly followed up with the First ICIS Asian Surfactant Conference in Singapore in November – another outstanding success with speakers and attendees from all across the region. Going forward, the Second ICIS World Surfactant Conference is already scheduled for April in New York and we have penciled in additional conferences in Europe and Asia for later in 2012. Part of the mission of the our venture with ICIS is surfactant training courses focusing on technical and economic aspects of the business. Ideas are certainly welcome for the content of these courses as we are still very much at the stage of syllabus development.

Something not entirely surfactant related, but still worth a mention, is our very rewarding involvement with SiVance LLC, the former silicones business of Clariant. We joined the board and shareholder group of this company in 2009 and worked with the management team to complete a carve-out from the parent and restructuring of the business to form an independent specialty silicones company active in markets including coatings, electronics, cosmetics and pharmaceuticals. Come mid-2011, we essentially were presented with an opportunity too good to pass up and so our PE sponsor, GenNx360 Capital Partners and the board engaged our good friends Houlihan Lokey to explore options for selling the business. The process was completed to the benefit of all stakeholders by the end of September of 2011 and the business found a new, permanent, home with the innovative company (and, in my view, star turn at the Montreux Conference in 2010) Milliken. Best wishes to Craig and the team at SiVance (now Milliken Chemical).

In addition to our own ICIS surfactant conferences, 2011 was a busy year for speaking engagements. CESIO in Vienna in June was a great opportunity to connect with the international surfactant community. Our review of the event was blogged here. Shortly after CESIO, we participated in an event in Washington DC which turned out, somewhat unexpectedly, to be pivotal in terms of how we are going to spend our time in 2012.

A couple of weeks after CESIO at the end of June, we spoke at the ACS 15^th Annual Green Chemicals and Engineering Conference in Washington DC. The theme of my talk was (what else?), surfactants and the use of renewable feedstocks therein. We had a fairly decent attendance as my talk was part of a CM&E sponsored afternoon session on the business impact of green chemistry. Interestingly, there was, in the audience, Rob Bettigole, the managing partner of Elm Street Ventures, an early stage VC fund headquartered in New Haven, CT and among whose LP’s in the fund is Yale University. As it turned out, Rob had been in touch regularly with Yale’s Department of Green Chemistry and Green Engineering, where a brilliant PhD candidate, Patrick Foley, had been working on a brand new surfactant chemistry based on renewable carbohydrate chemistry. So between the first meeting and November 4^th, we worked together to finance a company and execute an exclusive global licensing deal with the University. The new company, P2 Science, Inc., is now operating from a new laboratory in Science Park in New Haven and numerous discussions with customers and partners are underway. The company has an extremely busy speaking schedule for the coming year as the new technology is introduced to a range customers in a range of markets.

Toward the end of the 2011, two very interesting trips hit home to me the importance, again, of the role of feedstocks in surfactant developments. Our week in Cartagena, Colombia was interesting in that it highlighted the vigorous efforts underway in that country to develop a palm oil, palm kernel and derivatives industries in biodiesel, surfactants and detergents. Fedepalma and Cenepalma are making a real difference in the agricultural economy in Colombia. Following that trip,  a couple of weeks in Malaysia and Indonesia, including a speaking engagement at PIPOC, generously underwritten by the Malaysian Palm Oil Board, also underscored the importance of this industry to the region.

Looking forward to 2012, we see a lot of time and energy spent in assisting P2 Science getting to the next stage with their new surfactant chemistry. Our consulting clients (who we do not name) will continue to keep us interested and involved in some fascinating new initiatives. We also look forward to further major projects with Ballestra in sulfonation and ethoxylation. On  the conference front, our focus is on the second NYC surfactant conference followed by a first conference in Europe and a repeat conference in Singapore at the end of the year.

Best wishes for  a successful 2012.

ICIS / Neil A Burns LLC – Surfactant Conferences Venture

I was very happy to see our company release the following news item late on Friday. This new venture comes out of the success of our surfactant conference produced with ICIS in New York in May. I am looking forward to seeing many friends and colleagues at future events, including the First ICIS Asian Surfactant Conference in Singapore, November 10th. I also encourage your feedback regarding content, format and location of these events going forward.

NEWS RELEASE: Neil A Burns LLC
For More Information Contact:                                                      FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Neil Burns: Tel +1 (732) 303 -7164
Managing Partner
Freehold, NJ
07728, USA
www.neilaburns.com
neil@neilaburns.com

July 20, 2011

Location: Freehold, NJ

REED BUSINESS INFORMATION LTD. (RBI) OF THE UK AND NEIL A. BURNS LLC OF THE USA HAVE ENTERED INTO A LONG-TERM AGREEMENT TO CO-PRODUCE CONFERENCES AND SEMINARS IN THE FIELD OF SURFACTANTS.

The conferences and seminars will be held globally in North America, South America, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. The first event as part of this agreement will be the First ICIS Asian Surfactant Conference to be held at the Intercontinental Hotel, Singapore on November 10^th and 11th 2011. Further information and registration is available at www.icis.com/asiansurfactants

The agreement follows the two companies’ successful collaboration on the First ICIS World Surfactant Conference in New York in May 2011. The conference attracted over 150 senior managers from the surfactant industry with attendees and speakers representing companies such as AKZO, BASF, Church & Dwight, Colgate, Croda, Dow, Ecolab, Johnson &Johnson, Kao, LG, PQ, P&G, Reckitt Benckiser, Rhodia, SC Johnson, Stepan, and many others.

RBI, via their ICIS subsidiary, has an existing successful business holding conferences and training courses globally in many chemical areas including petrochemicals, oleochemicals, and base-oils. The company notes that the agreement with Neil A. Burns LLC enables them to expand their conference activities into a new key market with significant global potential.

Neil Burns, whose company Neil A Burns LLC has an existing business providing advisory and investment services in specialty chemicals with a particular focus on the surfactant value chain, will play a key role at the surfactant events as chair and/or speaker. Regarding the upcoming Asian conference, he states, “Due to the success of the first ICIS World Surfactant Conference in New York, earlier this year, we have been asked by many industry players to bring the conference to Asia. We are excited to be holding this event in the middle of the fastest growing, most dynamic surfactant market in the world today.”

CESIO Surfactants Conference, Vienna Austria, June 5 – 8th

This previously quadrennial event, altered its schedule and took place 3 years after Paris before settling into a biennial rhythm going forward (so, next one is 2013 in Barcelona). Incidentally, the next major conference in the surfactant world this year is now the First ICIS Asian Surfactants Conference, November 10th and 11th in Singapore. My company is co-producing as part of our conference business venture with ICIS.

At CESIO, I presented a paper at the Tuesday morning “Market Trends” session entitled “Biomass – a  new feedstock value chain for surfactants”. It was quite well received. Most of the questions following the paper centered around cost effectiveness of the current technology and whether or not this was a high cost niche. My answer; there is no green premium when it comes to this segment. The market has a need for a viable, third leg to the value chain (as outlined in our recent INFORM article) and cost competitiveness is essential.

Some highlights of themes emerging and events happening at the convention:

First a couple of announcements that hit the wire during the conference:

• Rhodia announced a JV with Sibur in Russia for the production of surfactants. It is expected that Sibur will supply ethylene oxide to the JV for the production of ethoxylates.
• Shell announced an intention to explore a world scale ethylene plant in the Appalachian region of the Northeastern US, taking advantage of the ethane rich, locally available Marcellus Shale gas deposits. The project is said to include derivatives, most likely polyethylene. This has significant relevance for the surfactant industry as, of course, a small part of this ethylene could be available for the production of ethylene oxide for use by ethoxylators. Elsewhere in this blog we has discussed the coming advantages for US based petrochemicals producers based on the use of shale gas derived ethane. Even now, North America is the second lowest cost region for ethylene manufacture, globally.

Some Conference Highlights:

• Henkel CEE (Central and Eastern Europe) discussed the diversity of their markets in Eastern Europe and introduced an index relating to how many minutes of work, on average, it took the average citizen in each of their markets to earn enough to buy a 400 g package of Persil detergent. The number ranged from 5 to 135, which underlines the marketing challenge even within a single region.
• Novozymes continues to be a huge presence at these types of events. Interesting that, at a surfactant event, one of the key participants is a company whose products enable the reduction of surfactant loading in cleaning formulations.
• The Battelle Institute gave an interesting analysis of the markets for laundry detergent in the US and Europe and the differences in formulations between the two regions. Lots of detail. One of the more interesting points is that European formulations, in general are more complex with a greater variety of ingredients. Should we read more “sophisticated” Europeans?… who’d a thunk it.
• Shell presentation on high active (90%) blends, helpfully dubbed “HAM” (high active materials), suggested a much higher reach for the shipment of surfactant from integrated sulfonation and ethoxylation sites to detergent manufacturers.
• EOR (Enhanced Oil Recovery) got some coverage at the conference. Not only affirming it’s status as the next big thing in surfactants (a status held by EOR for at least 25 years), but also evidencing some considerable expenditure of time and money in the field. I was particularly gratified to hear the proceedings of our very own first ICIS World Surfactant Conference quoted by a speaker – and by none other than a BASF speaker, Dr. Alfred Ruland of BASF Germany. Dr. Ruland cited Pascal Juery’s comments at our conference around the importance of EOR to Rhodia. Nice to see.
• Methyl Ester Ethoxylates got some heavy billing from both Huntsman and KLK. Elsewhere, including on the sidelines, Methyl Ester Sulfonates continued to generate buzz as the production technology offered by, among others, Ballestra continues to establish itself with multiple players, especially in palm-rich Southeast Asia.
  • An interesting statistic put forward by Huntsman is that they have supplied 15,000 MT of Methyl Ester Ethoxylate to the North American heavy duty laundry market last year.
• Solazyme made its debut at the conference (and in fact the debut of the entire “new renewables” industry), with a well-attended and thought provoking paper. The company introduced its technology and made its case (very well) that this technology is slated to have a major impact on the surfactant value chain. I especially liked the picture of the Solazyme railcar – emphasizing the point that “yes we are at commercial scale here!”. Nicely done by Tim and his colleagues.
• Oxiteno, continued to step onto the world stage with a nice survey of the Brazilian and Latin American markets presented by Andre Polo. Some interesting nuggets included the 30 Million Hectares of land devoted to Oil Palm and the 30 Billion barrels of crude oil reserves in Brazil. Another fascinating statistic is that Brazil is the largest market for hair conditioner in the world. Yes, Brazilian women really care about how they look!
• A member of the Japan surfactant industry association gave a very detailed survey of the surfactant market in Japan. One thing that struck me, although I sort of knew it already, is that the market there has been shrinking yearly since 1990!

So, overall, a great meeting with lots of informal interactions around the exhibit hall and at lunches and dinners in Vienna. The closing event at the outstanding “Rathaus” (Vienna’s townhall) was really first class. My gut tells me that the speaker line-up at the next CESIO will include many other renewables companies, Solazyme having blazed a trail there. Further discussion of EOR and of the new value chain co-operations emerging around integrated ethylene, EO, ethoxylation and sulfonation sites, especially in North America will also likely be featured.

That’s almost it for the Summer for me on the speaking circuit. I have one more paper to give at the ACS 5^th International Conference on Green and Sustainable Chemistry in Washington DC June 21-23. Next stops will include Cartagena, Colombia in October (AOCS) and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia  in November (PIPOC) and of course, the First ICIS Asian Surfactants Conference, November 10th and 11th in Singapore . Stay tuned to this blog or to our Twitterfeed (@NeilABurns) for information as it becomes available.