There is a need to start thinking as how our chemicals provide solutions to end users, says Jayant V. Dhobley, Business Head and CEO, Global Chemicals, Fashion Yarn & Insulators, Aditya Birla Group at the recently concluded 15th Annual India Chemical Industry Outlook Conference and Exhibition organized by Indian Chemical Council (ICC) on the theme “India’s USD 5 Trillion Economy: Role of Chemicals in Navigating the Future.”

“I think there is no way to build a sustainable chemical industry without a focus on safety. We have developed a safety tool at our insulator manufacturing factory. It is a very labor intensive process and one of the challenges we face in the industry is how do you develop good standard operating procedures (SOPs) for operators to comply with. We used modern tools such as video cameras and virtual tools and in today's technology, it doesn't require a lot of investment to produce a lot of good SOPs,” commented Dhobley.

Stressing on the global learnings for Indian specialty chemicals, Dhobley said, “If I compare the Indian specialty chemicals industry with the global industry, we were about US$32 billion in size in 2020  and expected to grow about us$64 billion by 2025 at the CAGR of 12%+. If you look at the global specialty materials space, the industry is about US $ 800 billion and growing at 16% CAGR and it will reach about US $1000 billion by 2025. We are all happy with our 12% but we need to be realistic that the actual numbers in terms of global comparisons are still an opportunity.”

He said that most of the Indian specialty chemical industry is focused on pharma, API, agrochemical, dyes, pigments and coatings; actually 80% of the specialty chemicals. Look at the market cap, the chemical industry is about 2%-3% of the nifty 500. And specialty chemicals make up just a percent of the nifty market. The global industry is operating very differently and have different types of end markets. They are large and scalable, for example, automotive is a very big end market and so are electronics, feed, nutraceuticals, aerospace and defense industries,” commented Dhobley.

Pointing out the opportunities, Dhobley says, “I think we have to be cognizant of the above facts and another gap we have to realize is that global specialty chemicals are also very sharply focused on their downstream portfolio. Those are the companies that are rewarded the best in the capital market. I will take three examples on how we can become solution partners. We speak a lot on sustainability and the role of wind in sustainability. Wind mill blades, for example, are produced using epoxy resins and traditionally these along with carbon fibers have never been recyclable.”  

He further informed that Aditya Birla Group is actually one of the first in the world to introduce the technology on recycling of epoxy composites.

“We won't get into the chemistry of it but essentially it allows you to depolymerize by drawing cleavages in the hard inner molecule and what it does is when you fabricate a compound using thermosetting material and fiber you generate a lot of waste and we depolymerize it back into plastic resin. End of life recycling is possible for wind mill sheaths like products. Theme of understanding of industry products. Marrying that with IP, sustainability creates a whole model. There is a lot of work going on in thermosetting resin,” he revealed.

“We all talk about climate change and India is probably going to be the worst affected country from a climate change perspective. Preserving water for us is very important nationally, socially and in industrial terms. Solutions such as fluoride removal, resin removal in oil and gas are just a few examples. We have to become solution providers rather than just manufacturing chemicals for the sake of it,” concludes Dhobley.