Green Future for Chemicals Industry
The Northwest chemicals industry is changing fast. For intensive
production read sustainable manufacturing, for base chemicals read
new and innovative green chemistry. And it is companies like
Manchester-based Reaxa that are at the forefront of this era of
change.
Set up less than a year ago as a spin out company from Avecia
and Cambridge University, Reaxa offers a new cleaner, greener type
of chemistry. One of its core products uses polymer beads to
encapsulate precious metals within synthetic products and waste
streams. Traditionally, retrieving these metals would have meant
incinerating tonnes of resin, but now it involves burning just a
few kilos of polymer beads.
In terms of the environment, this has huge benefits, explains
Reaxa Chief Executive Dr Pete Jackson. "In the past you'd have to
ship large quantities of materials around the country and use
energy to burn it, which all produces lots of CO2. But now if you
strip the metals out using bead technology, you can recycle the
solvents too, because the economic value of the metal is trapped in
the beads."
And with metals such as rhodium currently valued at around
$120,000 a kilo, it's little surprise business is booming.
Reaxa isn't alone in helping to green the Northwest's £10
billion chemical industry. INEOS Silicas is a recent winner of the
industry's Green Product Design Award, while Uniqema, is seeing a
significant growth in their range of naturally-based products,
particularly biodegradable hydraulic fluids which can be used
safely in environmentally sensitive areas.
Waste Reduction
There is also a move across the region to develop more
sustainable manufacturing processes, and over the next two years
more than £1 million is to be invested into this area through a
Northern Way initiative.
"There's now a much greater focus on sustainable manufacturing,
with companies placing a special emphasis on how they reduce waste
and energy use," explains Dr. Chris Ashcroft, General Manager of
Chemicals Northwest, a regional cluster organisation for chemicals
supported by the Northwest Regional Development Agency (NWDA).
In all there are six priority sectors in the Regional Economic
Strategy (RES), which together account for 55% of Northwest GVA,
and which are central to the NWDA's policy of cluster development.
This is designed to encourage companies from similar industries,
and which share the same geographic area and infrastructure, to
network, build relationships and improve their competitive
advantage.
The chemical industry is now part of the region's Advanced
Engineering and Materials sector, which is made up of industries
such as aerospace and car manufacturing that use the advanced
composites and polymers developed by the region's chemicals
companies.
And this concept of clusters is proving ideal for the region's
new look chemical industry, a sector that employs over 40,000
skilled people at over 400 manufacturing sites. It provides a
quarter of the UK's chemical output, and with over 60% of
production going into overseas markets it is the region's No 1
exporter.
Cutting Edge
Once dominated by a handful of big multinationals, often
specialising in the bulk manufacture of industry staples such as
chlorine and sodium hydroxide, the sector now features a new breed
of SMEs and spin out companies, many based around new applications
developed by the region's universities.
Ashcroft talks of a move towards "smaller, more innovative,
speciality chemical operations that are much more at the cutting
edge of modern science." In some cases they have developed on the
back of traditional industries, but more often they are the result
of a marriage between scientific entrepreneurs and academia.
There is now much more focus within universities on industrial
collaboration and getting their applications out into the real
world. This is reflected by developments such as Manchester's
government-supported Organic Materials Innovation Centre (OMIC) and
the Innovation Centre at Liverpool Science Park, the NWDA and
European-funded state-of-the-art facility that provides small
companies with the resources and local links they need to move
forward.
"Ten to fifteen years ago this innovation was happening inside a
handful of big companies," says Reaxa's Jackson. "Now, a lot of the
technology investment that was put in by those big companies via
universities has worked its way through, and is coming back out as
actual businesses.
"And it's smaller companies like Reaxa that are hopefully going
to become the bigger companies of the future."
For further information:
email: chris.ashcroft@chemicalsnorthwest.org.uk
tel: 01928 515678
www.chemicalsnorthwest.org.uk