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Benoît MAGNY
French citizen
Sartomer, Cray Valley, Total Group. Product
Manager in charge of a resin line.
Qualified at Ecole Nationale Supérieure
de Chimie in Paris then earned a DSc in
polymer physics and chemistry from Ecole
Supérieure de Physique et Chimie
Industrielle.
Started out on the technical side of the
Group’s Chemicals business, then moved
towards sales and management.
When I got my DSc, Cray Valley offered me
a job at their plant in Verneuil, in the
French department of Oise. I started out
as a Research Engineer at the Coating Physics
and Chemistry Department. I worked with
two technicians on the key physical properties
that determine molecule behaviour.
Physics, chemistry
and analysis
We focused the bulk of our research on adhesive
and protective properties, as the products
we developed wound up in decorative paints
or industrial coatings.
A few years later I was put in charge of
the Department encompassing Physics, Chemistry
and Chemical analysis. There were just under
20 of us there. We worked on rheology (the
transition from liquid to solid states)
and the Analysis team was in charge of supporting
in-house research, providing customers with
technical support, and gathering intelligence
about the competition. For example, we organised
technical seminars for our customers in
Europe and the United States, to present
our products’ properties and behaviour,
and their feedback helped us decide where
we wanted to take our research.
In 2001 I was given more responsibility.
That was when the Applications Department
opened in my area (there were 40 or so of
us). This Department formulates the resins
we promote to our customers. Tying the knot
between physics and chemistry on one side,
applications on the other, and everything
in between, involved setting up labs to
interlink all the fields of expertise.
A sales and marketing
dimension
Last summer brought a new change: I became
product manager for a range of oligomers
used in coverings that set in the presence
of light. What we do there is take a liquid
coating and put it through a UV bath to
harden the substrate. Ready-to-lay wooden
floors have a layer a few microns thick
of our products. Some inks have it too.
Our clients are contractors in the woodworking
or ink businesses. But we also work with
the electronics sector (our products are
used to coat printed circuits), plastics
and glassmaking.
This is a fiercely competitive market, and
there are two trends at work: cutting costs
to offset the scarcity of raw materials,
and investing in innovation (we funnel 3
percent of our revenue to research). To
give you an idea of the size of our market,
consumption worldwide must stand at about
200,000 tonnes, and consumption in Europe
at about 80,000. We make about 30 % of that.
Personally, I like this new job because
of the sales and marketing aspect, after
working on the technical side. But I still
need my technical skills to do my job. We
have the advantage of being a small unit
and of being able to lean on a Group. That
makes us really responsive at every level,
from the preliminary development proposals
all the way up the line to applications.
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