Chemical industry

And what did you end up studying and how did that move into a career for you?

Well, I was interested in, it was very peculiar in a way, I was interested in industrial chemistry and I was accepted into the University of New South Wales to do a Bachelor in Industrial Chemistry and awarded a accrediting by Rycol Chemicals, who are the manufacturers of Dulux paints.

Yeah, right.

And then I was given a Teachers' College scholarship to go to Wagga Wagga Teachers' College, and I decided to take that instead.

So one of the questions I often have as a business reporter is this kind of the pharma versus the rest of chemistry, and it seems like you might have had some ability to look at that as you were reporting this story.

You know, how much of the chemical industry, as relates to the way we conceptualize it here at CNN, is in those medical sciences pharma versus kind of the everything else bucket?

It's a good question, and I think that the very short answer, and the slightly reductive answer, is yes, a lot is pharma.

If you are looking at the industry section, what we decided to do was look at the top 10 biopharmaceutical companies by revenue in the US and then look at the top 10 chemical makers in the US, also by revenue.

And then we were kinda like, that would involve going to every fire department in the nation, if they even have that data, so no. [laughs] You know, maybe if we were able to, like, hire somebody on a temporary basis or, or partner with a data collection organization, maybe, but that was just well beyond the remit of this assignment, I think.

Yeah.

I think another thing that got left on the cutting room floor, which is I think for good reason, but maybe is something we will revisit in the future, is just a lot of information related to the international chemical industry.

We-

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Process Safety with Trish and Tracy is a production of Chemical Processing.

Chemical Processing focuses on serving engineers, designing and operating plants in the chemical industry.

welcome to process safety with trish and tracy where we share insights from past incidents to help prevent future ones i'm tracy purdom editor-in-chief of chemical processing and with me as always is the one and only trish karen director of lead like karen if you haven't already subscribe to this free award-winning podcast on your favorite platform so you can continue learning with trish and me in this series hey trish hey tracy how are you doing

i'm doing pretty well uh Last week, I released a free e-book on my website talking about due diligence in safety and some practical tips and guide for people in the workplace for leaders.

So really exciting to get that particular piece of information out there into people's hands.

But everybody still wants to set its own rules and doesn't want to give up any autonomy.

And that means that, to be very honest, and that's what you see in the chemical industry for sure.

And when I look back over history, Europe has become a laggard, and I don't know how much hope there is to revert that.

That will take a lot of hard work.

When I started in the chemical industry in Europe 30-odd years ago, 30% of all the chemicals in the planet were produced in Europe, and now it's less than 15%.

And the US, it was also 30%, it still is.

So they have maintained that competitive advantage, and China has taken over a lot.