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Philippe CORBIERE
French citizen
Grande Paroisse, Total Group.Industrial
Manager, Nitrogen Line, Industrial Division,
Grande Paroisse.
Qualified at Lyon’s Ecole Supérieure
de Chimie Industrielle, in France.
Started out in Processes then moved to Operations
before taking on a job at Headquarters.
I did my eight-month end-of-studies internship
with the Manufacturing Department at Elf
Atochem at the time. I had done an internship
in R&D before that, so I had a pretty
wide view of the different lines of business.
Living in America
I qualified and Elf asked me if I wanted
to do my National Service working in the
United States for 15 months. That was how
I wound up doing organic-chemistry research
in a lab at Pittsburgh University. I was
working on the addition of orthothioformates
in double bonds. Broadly speaking, orthothioformates
are molecules that have three sulphur molecules.
If you combine them with alkene, they can
provide new lubricating properties.
Processes then
exploration
Back in France, Elf Atochem offered me a
process-engineering job in their Villers
Saint Paul plant, in the Oise Department,
in the Fine Chemistry division. I spent
the following four years and a bit running
a wide variety of projects (monitoring production
units, providing technical support, finding
new production processes, assessing risks,
etc.).
I worked with a Research Engineer and, together,
we took out two patents (for the continuous
production of pivaloyl chloride and aqueous
solutions of alkaline salts of arylacetic
acid). These two molecules go into the production
of amoxicillin (a.k.a. Penicillin G). I
was fortunate enough to size and commission
both production units.
In January 1999 I moved to Toulouse to work
for Atofina Grande Paroisse as Operations
Engineer. That was the sort of career move
you’d expect as a young engineer.
There, I was in charge of operating a unit
that produced 350,000 tonnes of ammonia
a year.
In 2001 I was assigned to Grandpuits, outside
Paris, and put in charge of the ammonia
and water-treatment operations. There, we
made 410,000 tonnes of ammonia (which was
used to make fertilisers, mainly) and 22,000
tonnes of carbon dioxide (which became bubbles
in soft drinks!). That was a proper management
job, too: I had about 60 people reporting
to me.
Cross-company industrial
responsibility
Earlier this year I moved to the Grande
Paroisse Headquarters as Industrial Manager.
That’s actually a new position that
involves monitoring the production of fertilisers
containing nitrogen across the Group. That
encompasses the plants in Grandpuits ( Seine-et-Marne),
Rouen ( Seine-Maritime), Oissel ( Seine-Maritime),
Mazingarbe ( Seine-Maritime) and Pec-Rhin
( Haut-Rhin). It also involves defining
new projects and taking part in defining
the company’s industrial strategy.
I liaise with the Corporate Office, Purchasing,
Flows, Sales, Agronomy and other departments.
I’m learning a lot about them too.
What you need to do this job is fairly simple:
I liked chemistry then and like it now.
Then you have to be mobile, available, responsive
and proactive. In France, chemistry is moving
towards high-added-value production or right-sizing.
Mergers and competition are not something
we should worry about. They should motivate
us. And challenge us!
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