Scotland's chemical sciences set to power ahead
Scotland’s chemical sciences sector regularly punches above its weight: its major contribution to economic growth and huge potential make it an important player in the European market. In 2012, this ‘Cinderella’ sector generated a turnover of £8.7bn of which £4.5bn was exported. While chemical sector exports vary to some extent from year to year because of oil price fluctuations, the clear upward trend seen over the past few years is already underpinning Chemical Sciences Scotland’s ambition to grow exports by 50%. Indeed, the sector already accounts for just over 17% of all Scotland’s international exports, placing the sector second only to the food and drink industry, which exported £4.7bn in 2012.
Scotland’s global profile has attracted several of the top global chemical companies, including Dupont Teijin (US/Japan), Exxon (US), Ineos (Switzerland), Syngenta (Switzerland) and FujiFilm (Japan) to operate and invest in Scotland. They are among the 200 chemical sciences companies currently operating in Scotland employing a total of 70,000 people, 13,500 of these directly.
Dr Sandy Dobbie, chairman of Chemical Sciences Scotland (CSS) believes that recent events will give Scotland a competitive edge in Europe following the shift in the balance of global supplies. “The emergence of the Middle East as a major petrochemicals source and the recent US shale gas revolution, which has reinvigorated that country’s manufacturing sector, will accelerate the closure of many of Europe’s refineries that are based on naphtha as they will no longer be competitive against low cost gas-based producers in the Middle East and US. Fortunately, the INEOS refinery at Grangemouth is one of the few facilities in Europe able to process gas as well as oil feedstock and Ineos’s £300m investment to ship low cost gas from the US into Scotland will give us the opportunity to become one of the survivors of the coming European shake-out.”
If Scotland is to build on its current success, Dr Dobbie believes innovation and collaboration are also essential. “It’s vital that industry and academia work closely together to ensure innovation takes place here and is commercially exploited here rather than anywhere else. We want to be both the originator and the manufacturer of new products.
“Long-term we also need to develop emerging areas such as industrial biotechnology – making more products from raw material such as grasses, forestry products and marine organisms – and we believe that Scotland has the potential to generate £900m in turnover by 2025 by becoming a world leader in this sector. The recent establishment of IBioIC, the Industrial Biotechnology Innovation Centre and the publication of the National Industrial Biotechnology plan are critical steps on that pathway.”
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