Photographer: Todd Parker
In one decade, Arkema Inc. has almost totally transformed itself into an innovative, agile, global chemical producer with a regionally balanced portfolio, providing specialty chemicals and advanced materials,” said Brian Wilson, plant manager of Arkema Inc.’s Clear Lake Plant. 2016 marks the 10th anniversary of Arkema’s creation through a spin-off by Total S.A. The company has spent the year celebrating around the world, and its Clear Lake site is no exception.
Wilson has been a part of Arkema since 2012, when he joined the company for a role at the Clear Lake acrylics plant. He began his career at Rohm & Haas as a process engineer at the company’s hydrogen cyanide facility in Deer Park, Texas, after earning a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from Georgia Tech, and a Master of Chemical Engineering degree and Executive MBA from the University of Houston. Wilson worked for Rohm & Haas for 20 years in a variety of engineering, manufacturing and special project roles, with his last role being director of global safety, security and risk management. After Dow purchased Rohm & Haas, he went into private equity with Avantor Performance Materials to manage operations. Following that, he joined Arkema and went on to become plant manager at the Clear Lake site in 2014.
“As plant manager, my top priority is to achieve excellence in health, safety and environmental performance,” explained Wilson. “I’m also responsible for ensuring high product quality and efficient operations, for development of all site employees and for ensuring that the plant makes a positive contribution to the local community through volunteerism, sponsorships and support of education.”
Wilson sees technical competence as essential to overseeing all plant operations, including safety and environmental practices.
“But it’s critical to also have skills such as the ability to listen to others, understand different points of view and give people space to figure things out for themselves,” he said. “Above all, you need to be able to create an environment in which people drive home every day feeling like they did a good job and come to work knowing that they have a great team to work with.
“You foster that kind of environment by always setting people up for success — ensuring they have clear direction, the training they need to get the job done, opportunity to show what they can achieve, the motivation to want to take on a challenge and trust that their achievements will be rewarded and recognized.”
Innovation and achievements
In its first 10 years, Arkema tripled its operating income and doubled its earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) margin. It also has virtually tripled its market capitalization. Annual sales of $8.6 billion were reported in 2015.
“Arkema has made innovation a growth driver since day one, and we were named one of the Top 100 Global Innovators by Thomson Reuters for the last five years,” said Wilson. “We are part of the sustainability revolution, laying the groundwork for more fuel-efficient cars, growth in renewables and sustainable housing. Our six R&D platforms are focused on performance materials that tackle the environmental challenges of the future.”
Other achievements in the past decade include dramatically improving its safety and environmental performance.
“We had one of the lowest recordable injury rates in the industry in 2015,” said. Wilson. “In 10 years, we have slashed our greenhouse gas emissions by 64 percent and our air emissions by 43 percent. And we are shrinking our energy bill every year.”
Arkema employs 19,000 people worldwide and operates in nearly 50 countries. The company’s Clear Lake Plant in Pasadena, Texas, is one of its main acrylics production sites and produces acrylic acid, butyl acrylate and methyl acrylate. The overall plant, which today is owned by Celanese Corp., started operation in 1967. The acrylics portion of the plant began operating in 1973, and Arkema purchased this portion and certain other acrylics assets in 2010.
Arkema invested in the Clear Lake Plant in 2013 (acrylic acid expansion) and 2014 (new 45,000-metric-ton methyl acrylate unit) to expand its position as one of the world’s leading manufacturing sites for acrylic acid and derivatives. These investments are in addition to the $10 million-$20 million spent per year in general capital projects to enhance health, environmental and safety performance and operating efficiencies and to make equipment upgrades.
Taking pride
The Clear Lake team marked Arkema’s 10-year anniversary with a celebration event for all employees.
“We showed videos that had been produced in honor of the anniversary, featuring Arkema employees around the world and showing the breadth of our company in all the languages and geographies we operate,” said Wilson. “We also showed a presentation that featured photos of the people who have worked at the Clear Lake Plant during the last 10 years. It was a great event, and it has been clear that employees here take a lot of pride in the culture that Arkema is building, particularly our commitment to excellent health, environment and safety performance.”
The team continues to work hard in all areas.
“Safety is a constant challenge, and no matter how well you’re doing you can never be satisfied,” said Wilson. “We were reminded of that recently when we had a few incidents shortly after we celebrated six years without an OSHA recordable injury at our plant. Each of our recent incidents involved someone who was relatively new to his or her job. Although we have great training systems, this was a good reminder that experience in a role can help us to operate safer. Based on these recent incidents, we increased our new employee training to help ensure we do everything we can to help newer employees work safe every day.”
Arkema emphasizes making a positive contribution to the communities in which it operates and where its employees live. The Clear Lake Plant has a robust community relations program.
“One of the initiatives I find most valuable is our participation in the Bay Area Community Advisory Panel (CAP),” said Wilson. “This group meets every month, has about 60 participants and is an excellent forum for helping members of the community understand our industry and how seriously we take safety and environmental protection. It also gives us an opportunity to hear what’s on our neighbors’ minds and to address any questions or concerns they have.
“Within the CAP, we learn about important issues together by inviting outside experts to our meetings to present on topics like local air quality, Galveston Bay health and hurricane preparedness in our region.”
The Clear Lake team also supports education. Wilson is a board member of the La Porte Leadership Education Foundation. In addition, the plant conducts an annual Science Teacher Program.
“This year, we hosted four local teachers for three days,” explained Wilson. “We provided each teacher with a science kit for use in classroom demonstrations and gave them science-based training as well as exposure to how we apply science in our workplace. Finally, we awarded $500 to each teacher and donated $500 to each participating school.”
The plant donates to a range of causes and has a United Way campaign. In 2016, employees donated $42,928 to United Way. In fact, the plant has increased employee giving to United Way by more than 150 percent since 2011, while headcount has stayed generally the same.
Wilson and the Clear Lake team are committed to maintaining that support.
“We drive to be the supplier of choice, employer of choice and the neighbor of choice,” he said. “It’s only nine words, but it says a lot, and we work very hard to achieve these goals. This is where I spend a lot of my time — trying to make sure our customers want us, our people want to work here and the community wants us to continue to operate here.”
Arkema Inc. Clear Lake Plant
9502B Bayport Boulevard
Pasadena, TX 77507
(713) 751-7350
www.arkema.com
Employees: 120 employees and 60 contractors
Products: Acrylic acid, butyl acrylate and methyl acrylate
Size: 1,000 acres
