The Chemical Industries Association (CIA) last night (21 June) hosted the Chemical Industry Awards in Newcastle under the theme of winning growth.
In a speech, Steve Elliott, Chief Executive of CIA paid tribute to the work of chemical businesses across the UK saying “Despite all the justified concerns over the economy, earlier this year, the UK produced record exports by volume and leading that achievement was the chemical sector – making your companies who’s exports have doubled in a decade, the nation’s number one manufacturing exporter”.
He continued “With the world’s very best combination of mineral & energy resources, of innovation and of truly talented people – we will grow again. It is through our work together on manufacturing and resource efficiency, the achievements of our young people, our engineering excellence, building our reputation, maximising energy efficiency and delivering low carbon solutions, environmental protection and enhancement, our process safety performance, our commitment to Responsible Care, innovation and above all our skilled workforce ... it is through all these things that we can provide environmental, social and economic growth for our country and accelerate the UK’s recovery and global competitiveness. And it is no coincidence that these areas are all part of not just our Awards programme but our mainstream work at the Association, showing that the chemical industry is the route to winning growth.The 2012 winners were as follows:

INEOS Responsible Care Award – Dow Chemical, Kings Lynn
Dow Chemical, King’s Lynn won this award for their commitment to continually improve their performance towards the “Vision of Zero” – zero incidents, injuries, illnesses, and environmental harm. All employees understand that they hold a pivotal role in the achievement of this, through: their adoption of and commitment to the Responsible Care ethos; working to significantly reduce the risk of incidents – minor or major; minimising waste and conserving energy; implementing management programmes to achieve continual improvement in the areas of safety and environmental protection and ongoing evaluation of EH&S performance, to identify areas for improvement.

BIS Industrial Services Excellence in Engineering Award – Lucite International, Billingham
Maintaining an 80 year old site to deliver a world class manufacturing performance is not easy and Maintenance Excellence is at the heart of Lucite’s manufacturing excellence programme which has delivered huge increases in output and productivity over the last 10 years.  To a large extent this has been achieved by improving Overall Equipment Effectiveness and plant availability.
Focus on critical path items and challenging shut-down times has gone hand in hand with training of engineers. Risk / reward partnerships have also been entered into with 3rd parties, ensuring it is in everyone’s interest to keep equipment running well. 

The Dow Reputation Award – Eli Lilly and Company Limited, Speke
Caring for their employees, and their community, is central to Lilly’s culture. Corporate Responsibility is a fundamental part of who they are as an organisation.  Lilly’s approach is about partnerships, building and then strengthening relationships and offering tangible support, including employee’s time. As an example Lilly have set up a food alliance partnership with the YMCA to help homeless people grow their own food, with surplus going to local day care centres. 75 employees have spent 4 days each developing a 5 acre site with the YMCA for this purpose. The site is involved in a whole raft of other community work with schools and local charities and in 2012 their charitable donations will top the £1 million milestone.
Lilly’s community work had a strong link to the company’s business area, the huge commitment given by staff and the willingness of the company to respond positively to community concerns.

The GSK Innovation Award - Robinson Brothers Limited, West Bromwich
The purpose of this award was ‘out of the box’ thinking as well as proof that the innovation is better than existing technologies and addresses significant problem areas.
Vulcanization of rubber is a well know process and the products are used in numerous applications, many, such as surgical cloves requiring contact of the product with skin. The nitrogen curing agents historically used may cause skin irritation and allergies. Through a thorough understanding of the reaction mechanism Robinson Brothers were able to develop a nitrogen free curing system that overcame these difficulties. 

Environmental Leadership Award sponsored by Johnson Matthey - Dow Corning
This Award is for the company or operating unit that can demonstrate excellence in environmental leadership through the development or use of innovative clean technology or products that help reduce the environmental footprint of chemical manufacturing.
Driven by the leadership team and a network of Environmental Coordinators, Dow Corning site has made superb progress in reducing its environmental burden. Examples include reducing waste to landfill by over half and a 7-fold increase in recycling in the last 4 years.
Steve said “the concept of an Environmental Coordinators network demonstrates true site leadership and welcome the way Dow Corning have worked with third parties”.

ABB Manufacturing and Resource Efficiency - Eli Lilly
Judges for this award were looking for evidence that the company has developed or is developing its people and systems towards achieving excellent manufacturing and resource efficiency performance.
Demand for Avilamycin, produced by fermentation was outstripping production capacity. Lilly developed a multi-faceted strategy to increase product supply across all manufacturing steps.  By going back to first principles to improve product floculation from the fermentation process, a huge increase in capacity was obtained at the same time as reducing water and steam use by nearly three quarters. The changes have had a significant impact on the environmental footprint of the site as well as enabling more products to be made available for sale.

EDF Energy Low Carbon Award – GlaxoSmithKline, Ulverston
We all know how the cost of energy is rising; having a low carbon footprint is good for business and good for the environment.  The chemical industry can be proud of the fact that for every tonne of CO2 produced in manufacturing operations the products save nearly 3 tonnes in their use. 
An energy Kaizen involving the workforce was the start of an ideas generation process that identified a huge number of potential energy saving projects couple with the ‘hearts and’ minds’ exercise and communications campaign really got the workforce enthused.
GlaxoSmithKline’s Ulverston site had fully adopted and exceeded the group energy strategy and had made some truly outstanding energy reductions through both involving and motivating the workforce as well as prudent capital investment and use of third parties”.

The Gold Standard Skills Award, sponsored by COGENT and the National Skills Academy for the Process Industries - SABIC UK Petrochemicals
Sabic have developed “Activity Based Learning ”, a competence based learning system. This involved a complete analysis of all competences needed for every single role within the business; achieved via consultation with a large percentage of workforce, in each particular role, and their line management. Sabic also invest heavily in training and have initiated a new Management Development Program to allow technicians to bridge the gap to management positions, and have developed an online learning training system which helps provide a blended learning approach recognising not everyone learns in the same way.

Special Responsible Care Award for Process Safety Leadership, sponsored by Shell UK - Syngenta Ltd, Huddersfield
Employee engagement, a robust competency management system and a leadership team that ‘walks the talk’ are at the heart of Syngenta’s success. Leadership team with line managers reviews all recent safety incidents and reports and is followed by a member of the leadership team walking the site for a day to discuss safety issues. Realising that human factors is often the weak link in process safety a full time specialist has been recruited to ensure robust systems and practices are in place.

BASF Young Ambassador Award - Michael Bootyman, GlaxoSmithKline
The judges were looking for a Young Ambassador who has the ability to convey to others the excitement and opportunities the industry offers as well as an appreciation of the challenges and opportunities facing it.
Mike has worked in pharmaceutical manufacturing for 5 years and is currently Assistant team Leader at GSK’s Worthing site, providing technical support to the operations teams during a time of growth and systems change to redefine quality and safety expectations. Mike impressed the judges with his passion for promoting careers and the value of the industry to young people and has been involved in university fairs as well as Mayor of Enfield Award, a competition to find the best investigative and analytical young scientists.
Mike will be participating in a programme of activities representing the industry, including chairing the Future Forum.

Special Awards

Tees Valley Apprenticeship Programme
Utilising a small amount of the £60 million Government funding provided to the North East, local industry, working with government funded organisations, grasped the nettle and established the Tees Valley Apprenticeship Programme. The programme has been a huge success, sustaining 150 at risk jobs and providing sponsors for a further 150, effectively creating jobs for around £6,000 per apprentice – good value by any standards.

Sue Andrews of the Chemical Industry Education Centre
Sue was presented with an award for outstanding contribution to promoting the industry. Sue has worked tirelessly to engage schools to work with the industrial community in as many ways as possible.
Working closely with hundreds of schools requires the involvement of many ambassadors who are willing to visit school children to demonstrate the real life applications of their science lessons. In the last couple of years alone, the enthusiasm, persuasive powers and professional approach of our winner has resulted in ambassadors interacting with over 1,000 children in their own schools.

CIA Company of the Year, sponsored by Newton Europe - Eli Lilly
Based on an excellent overall performance, in the last two years the company has won major capital investment for a new product as well as a new bottling facility. The site has also made significant investments in the infrastructure, ensuring the longer term sustainability. In addition they have gained a number of contract manufacturing operations, again demonstrating the high esteem the site is held in by the parent company. This expansion has gone hand in hand with creation of around 50 permanent jobs.  Investment in safety, particularly process safety training for all employees has seen their accident rate fall to an all time low. Progress made on energy and water management saw the site pick up Lilly’s Global Energy Management and Water Intake Awards. A fantastic achievement and a company that we can be proud of in our industry.