By December 2023 Solvay will have been separated into two independent publicly listed companies, with its tyre silica business belonging to the firm focusing on essential chemicals. The names of these upcoming companies are Solvay and Syensqo.
Solvay is investing at its Livorno site in Italy to launch the company’s first circular highly dispersible silica (HDS), a product derived from rice husk ash. Production should begin by the end of 2024 and circular HDS will gradually replace the existing Zeosil portfolio. Tyre maker Continental is a key partner in Solvay’s journey to bring HDS to market.
Improving a tyre’s wear efficiency by up to 30 per cent while decreasing rolling resistance by up to six per cent without affecting any other performance area sounds like a tall order. But Bridgestone says that it has achieved this together with partners Arlanxeo and Solvay. The three firms presented Techsyn, the fruit of two years of collaboration, during an online presentation this afternoon.
With the 2020 US election shaping up to be the closest in the last two decades, no-one can yet say who will be the winning. However, share price analysts that are literally experts at hedging their bets, have compiled a list of post-Election share picks. In short, while growth is expected across the board in 2021, the recently-berated Goodyear is not the only tyre brand that would stand to gain from the end of Trump presidency.
Solvay’s Board of Directors has appointed Ilham Kadri as chair of the company’s Executive Committee, member of the Board of Directors and chief executive officer of the Group. These appointments take effect 1 March 2019. On that date, Kadri will officially succeed Jean-Pierre Clamadieu, who will then relinquish his executive duties and his mandate as director of Solvay.
Five of Michelin’s best suppliers were recognised at the fourth edition of the tyre maker’s Supplier Awards, which was held yesterday at ‘Aventure Michelin’ in Clermont-Ferrand, France. The awards were presented to representatives of the winning companies by Jean-Dominique Senard, chief executive officer and managing general partner of the Michelin Group, and four members of the Group Executive Committee.
Solvay will cut 600 jobs as part of a broad restructuring program aimed at simplifying the organization. On 29 March the firm announced that job cuts related to the restructuring include 160 redundancies in France, 90 in Portugal and 80 in Brazil.
Solvay has appointed Rodrigo Elizondo as president of its special chem global business unit, and Michael Finelli as president of its global specialty polymers business unit.
Rodrigo Elizondo, previously commercial director for special chem, has more than 26 years with the group. He has held commercial leadership and business management roles in North America, Europe and Asia for various business lines within Special Chem.
Raw materials supplier Solvay has announced increased sales and profits in its second quarter 2017 results, with net sales of 3 billion euros (US$3.5 billion), up 11 per cent compared to the same period in 2016.
Solvay has commenced production of Highly Dispersible Silica (HDS) at its new state-of-the-art plant in Gunsan, South Korea. The plant has an annual capacity of more than 80,000 tons and is producing Solvay’s most advanced grades of HDS – many of which are used in fuel efficient tyre compounds.
Solvay, Sylvaine Neveu, a researcher at the firm’s Research and Innovation entity within the group’s Global Business Unit Silica, has won the Irène Joliot-Curie 2016 award for work on energy saving tyre technology. She was honoured in the category “Woman, Research and Enterprise”, granted by the French Ministry of Education, Higher Education and Research.
Lintech International LLC has reported that it has been appointed as a non-exclusive distributor for Solvay Silica in the US, covering markets including the manufactured rubber goods (MRG) market.
At an official ceremony attended by local dignitaries, Solvay today launched the construction of its Highly Dispersible Silica (HDS) production plant in Gunsan, South Korea. The facility is being built to address growing demand in Asia for energy saving tyres, and to facilitate Solvay’s development of innovative HDS grades.
Solvay has appointed Jean-Francis Spindler to the role of research and innovation director within its Silica business unit. Spindler graduated with a Ph.D. in Organic Catalysis in 1990 from Claude Bernard University in Lyon, France and joined Rhône Poulenc as a project manager. He progressed through various scientific and management roles; his most recent positions were R&D director for Rhodia Organics and R&I European Zone director for Rhodia and then Solvay upon the former company’s acquisition.
At a ceremony held yesterday in Włocławek, Poland in the presence of the Belgian Ambassador to Poland, the mayor of Włocławek and other local dignitaries, Solvay officially broke ground for the construction of a new facility that will produce Highly Dispersible Silica (HDS). The new plant represents a €75-million investment that will create more than 50 new jobs and expand the company’s HDS capacity by 85,000 tons per year.
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