Applied Chemicals: 2016 reunion?

There’s a program on the radio ‘the Reunion’, in which people are brought together some years after a significant event. Most times they will have worked together to make it happen but sometimes they were protagonists and it’s interesting to see how the years have not dulled the differences but maybe have mellowed the people.

I’ve been doing a little reminiscing recently, it’s what happens when you get a little older and attend yet another funeral, and I reflected on my life in the 80s. That’s 30 years ago and for four of those years I was a product marketing Manager at Dow Chemical Europe in Switzerland.

I took on the role in May 1984 or thereabouts with responsibility for the Methocel and Ethocel businesses which had total sales together of about $50million. Methocel was, and still is, magic stuff. It’s used in building products on the one hand and food on the other. It’s a ‘specialty chemical’ and didn’t really fit with the Dow culture of commodity chemicals and plastics. Click here for more info about Methocel.

Anyway I didn’t know it at the time but the business was going down the toilet and twelve months later I saw that pretty clearly. But because it was not a typical Dow business and because the rest of the company was recovering nicely from the recession of the early 80s I didn’t get too many people offering their help and advice.

Fortunately, and this is where serendipity played its part, people change and during 1985/1986 several of the people with whom I had to work moved on and a group of us came together with a determination to turn the business round. Come the middle of 1986 it was clear that we were getting things right and in October/November we were confident enough to hold a sales meeting. The photo above is of most of the attendees. They’re a mix of sales people, other ‘direct contributors’ and ‘hangers on’.

• Back row: Jean Wittman (TS&D Manager), Fred Ferraton (Economic Evaluation), John Farrell (Controller Analyst), Ian Davenport (UK sales), Peter Riggers (Methocel Plant Superintendant), Ton Runneboom (Business Development Manager), Manfred Hannen (Quality Manager), Bruno Dilger (Director of Marketing).
• Next row: Tomas Jezinski (TS&D), Mikael ??? (Greece sales), Chris Forsdyke (Marketing Communications Manager), Andreas Gat (Eastern Europe Manager), Jean-Lionel Gros, Gerd Zimmermann (German sales)
• Next Row: Joe Hess (TS&D), Jon Bilbao (Spain sales), Steve Johnson (TS&D), John Plaice (TS&D), Agneta Brenner (Finland sales) ,Tony Cavadino (Product Flow), Karl-Heinz Geigl (MEAF Manager)
• Front row: Riener Schupstuhl (German sales), Peter Corbett (TS&D), Isabel David (France sales), me, Alan Henderson (TS&D), Jan Petersen (Nordic sales)

The photographer was Marten Zuiderdijn (Benelux sales). Sadly Manfred and Peter have died. Maybe others have as well.

Our confidence was well-placed. 1986 turned out to be a good year and 1987 was even better. I left the business in 1988 after 4 years and it was a bit of a star. One of my successors, not the immediate one, was Jon Bilbao.

Here’s my suggestion: if anyone out there sees this and identifies as one of the group, or if anyone would have been but couldn’t have attended the meeting, I know several, please get in touch. I’ll see about setting up some sort of event towards the end of next year.