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If you are a chemical producer or supplier, it pays to be a pessimist. Disaster, either natural or man-made is usually never far away. Be it a chemical plant explosion, or market collapse, global economic sanctions, trade war, or Brexit, no one can be certain what will hit the fan, or when.

Sometimes, the impact to chemical supply chains can be catastrophic. For example, when Hurricane Harvey hit Texas last year, the full force of the storm was felt by the chemical facilities around the petrochemical hub at Houston. As Bloomberg reported at the time, “A third of U.S. chemical production has been disrupted by Harvey, boosting prices and threatening shortages for basic industrial building blocks such as chlorine.”

The estimated total cost of the damage was $125 billion, while a report by Accenture, calculated that there was a, “… chemical production output shortage of approximately 70 million pounds (31 million kilos) of ethylene per day.”

Chemical supply shortages and supply chain disruption on this scale can impact any chemical company, causing headaches for even the most prepared chemical industry professional.

So, what can chemical procurement teams and commodity pool officers (CPO’s) do to minimize the impact of situations where chemical feedstocks are severely restricted or even grind to a halt?

Technology, it seems, may have the answer.

Blockchain, specifically, has the ability to handle the millions of pieces of data across entire supply chains, to keep purchasing departments informed when things go wrong, and to help them find alternative raw material sources.

As Bhudeep Hathi, an associate director for Accenture’s Advanced Technology Center explains, “Leveraging blockchain-based solutions is an innovative way to manage both information and process deficiencies. To mitigate disruptions in an operational supply chain, for instance, a chemical company could devise a permissioned blockchain that allows critical information and data related to plant operations and supply chains to be recorded in almost real time. This would make the information available to all required stakeholders within the ecosystem of a chemical company.”

He continues in his report for Accenture by noting example of data that could be applied or linked to a blockchain. These, “… include the volume of raw, intermediate and finished products, as well as production plans. Additional data might include financial details such as invoices, purchase orders, credit details, logistics data, work permit information and employee records. This blockchain-based data would act as a ‘golden reference source’ for reconciliation and recovery in a post-disaster scenario.”

For many chemical industry professionals, however, the use of blockchain may seem to be purely theoretical or ‘pie-in-the sky’. However, as Lorenzo Zullo, stated in a recent LinkedIn conversation, “Even if it is difficult to understand how blockchain works in practice, the potential of using it to track chemicals is evident. Similar to what happened with the creation of internet; people realised its importance only once practical applications (websites, email etc.) were developed.”

Zullo is the Co-Founder of Chemycal, an enterprise that monitors global chemical legislation to predict supply chain interruptions and market closures. He is also a major advocator of the power of blockchain in the chemical industry, recently outlining his beliefs in an article on SPOTCHEMI’s networking hub for chemical industry professionals.

By joining the SPOTCHEMI network you will be able to become a part of an international platform designed to streamline the buying and selling of industrial chemicals and raw materials.

As a member you will gain these valuable business advantages:

• A free service for presenting your chemical products
• A ‘find and locate’ service for the chemical products you need
• View the latest chemical price changes and trends
• Make new business contacts with like-minded chemical industry professionals
• Receive online inquiries to buy your chemical products from genuine purchasers
• Expand your chemical business by meeting trusted chemical suppliers
• Track your trading team’s deals and communication chains in one place
• Inspect potential clients visiting your company profile

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Here he described how, “Blockchain is a technology potentially highly suited to addressing supply chain challenges by creating a single, global, secure and trusted infrastructure to exchange and track chemical-related information along supply chains and across sectors. Managing efficiency, security, reliability, targeted accessibility and transparency among economic operators at different levels of the supply chain.”

But, as yet, the rethinking of chemical supply chains, the transparency between chemical consumers and suppliers, the use of digital purchasing or trading with blockchain, and the ‘expect-the-worst’ mentality hasn’t permeated through the chemical industry.

For example, a 2016 survey of commodity pool officers by Deliotte found that, “62% of CPOs increasingly feel their teams lack the skills needed to deliver their procurement strategy,” and “60% of CPOs do not have a clear digital strategy.”

Without a clear strategy, or the skills to implement it, it is difficult to imagine much success at chemical procurement, and yet it seems that even planning in the modern world is getting harder and harder.

As AI expert, author, and celebrated futurist Gihan Perera explains during his visionary presentations, “When you create your strategic plans for the future, do you include two kinds of futures? In the past, we could see what was ahead, and could plan for that in our strategy. That’s still important, but the world is changing so fast that there’s another kind of future: the future we can’t see. How do you plan for that future as well?”

If you goal is industrial chemical procurement, perhaps the best answer is to start thinking like a pessimist.

Photo credit: Exsif, Camco, MotherJones, Accenture, ChemstationAsia, & Statescoop

Any half-decent businessperson will tell you of the power of networking.

Meeting new contacts, discussing the industry, and finding solutions to work challenges; All of this and more can be done at a networking event or conference.

But in the same way that shopping, dating, and even friendships have gone online, so too has networking. But is that a good thing?

In many ways, yes, online networking has advantages over face-to-face meeting with chemical industry contacts. And here’s how;

1. Convenience.

The modern chemical industry is very international, so the ability to network without leaving your office or even your home makes life much simpler. Today, chemical business networking can be done anywhere with an Internet connection; on the train to work, waiting for a bus, in the minutes between meetings … anywhere.

2. No travel.

No connecting flights, no traffic jams, no soul-less hotel rooms. Online chemical industry networking is cheaper, saves time, and is better for the environment.

3. Recorded Conversation.

Unlike at a conference, online networking can maintain a transcript of what was discussed. This can be referred to even years later, as your online networking account maintains a full record of your contacts.

4. Easy to connect.

No more business cards. No more schmoozing. Online networking shows you who in the network you have most in common with. Need to bring one of your team in on the discussion? No problem, online networking allows for multi-connectivity. Alternatively, networking accounts can be set up as a team, so selected staff can participate. No duplicate emails, no cross-talking, your entire team can stay ‘in the loop’.

5. Ongoing.

Online discussions and networking continue for as long as someone has something to say, so there’s no need to squeeze all you want to say and hear into a two-day event.

6. Speed.

Without the formalities and etiquette of face-to-face meetings, online networking allows participants to get to the point more directly. ‘Here is a topic I want to discuss. Let’s talk.’

During the last century, contacts made were more personal, and maybe lasted for decades, as people stayed in their industry or even with the same firm for their whole working lives. Today, this is less common, with people changing jobs and industries multiple times in their careers, the need for a personal, friendly connection with someone is much less important.

7. Chemical industry focused.

Online networking is able to stay on topic as well as any conference. For example, the SPOTCHEMI platform (who host this page) has been designed for chemical industry professionals to meet, interact, present themselves and their companies, discuss industry trends, and even make offers to buy and sell chemical products, all in one chemical industry hub.

Providing instant access to over 300,000 chemical industry companies, SPOTCHEMI, is a clear example of how online networking is best.

Photo credits: Taxjustice, Fime, Jabil, JellyFishHealth, & Chemconsultants

Researchers from MIT have produced a new polymer that is able to heal itself by ‘growing’ in a way similar to plants using only carbon dioxide and light.

While the discovery needs further development before it can be used outside of the lab, there is wide-spread potential for a self-healing material, for example in the construction, fabric, and coatings industries.

As the MIT website explains, “The current version of the new material is a synthetic gel-like substance that performs a chemical process similar to the way plants incorporate carbon dioxide from the air into their growing tissues. The material might, for example, be made into panels of a lightweight matrix that could be shipped to a construction site, where they would harden and solidify just from exposure to air and sunlight, thereby saving on the energy and cost of transportation.”

The discovery is a first in chemical engineering and has created a whole new branch of material science that allows for substances to ‘grow’. As Professor Michael Strano, who led the study alongside nine of his colleagues at MIT and the University of California, described, “This is a completely new concept in materials science. [Outside of biology] What we call carbon-fixing materials don’t exist yet.”

The researchers have now published their findings in the journal Advance Materials, where they announce the discovery of, “a gel matrix containing aminopropyl methacrylamide (APMA), glucose oxidase (GOx), and nanoceria‐stabilized extracted chloroplasts that is able to grow, strengthen, and self‐repair using carbon fixation.”

They continue by explaining that, “Glucose produced from the embedded chloroplasts is converted to gluconolactone (GL) via GOx, polymerizing with APMA to form a continuously expanding and strengthening polymethacrylamide.”

This discovery is made clearer via this pictorial representation of the new material’s self-healing properties.

In the presence of light, the material reacts with carbon dioxide in the air to expand and fill the gap, repairing the damage.

But while the science is highly technical and has yet to be applied in a real-world setting, the environmental advantages of the new material are evident. Not only have the team created a synthetic material that does not require fossil fuels as a raw material, but a synthetic material that improves the surrounding environment by absorbing carbon dioxide.

As Strano says, “Imagine a synthetic material that could grow like trees, taking the carbon from the carbon dioxide and incorporating it into the material’s backbone.”

In fact, the discovery is part of a new strain of thinking that is beginning to see carbon dioxide as a useful chemical feedstock rather than simply a waste product or pollutant. As such, carbon fixation could become a breakthrough tool in the circular economy.

“Our work shows that carbon dioxide need not be purely a burden and a cost. It is also an opportunity.” Explains Strano, “There’s carbon everywhere. We build the world with carbon. Humans are made of carbon. Making a material that can access the abundant carbon all around us is a significant opportunity for materials science. In this way, our work is about making materials that are not just carbon neutral, but carbon negative.”

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Photo credit: MIT, ChemistryExplained, Lego, & EPPM