In late June, Johnson Matthey announced that it will divest its Alfa Aesar Research Chemicals business to Thermo Fisher Scientific. Following the divestment the company has unveiled a new branding for its Fine Chemicals Division that provides pharmaceutical customers around the globe with a range of services and solutions, including active ingredients, custom development services, catalysts and chiral technologies. The rebranding is seen as a key part of a customer-focused initiative to unite and realign these diverse fine chemicals capabilities and will enhance access for customers to the company’s chemistry capabilities and technologies, according to John Fowler, Division Director at Johnson Matthey Fine Chemicals. CHEManager International asked him to expand on the rebranding and provide a deeper insight into the strategy.

CHEManager International: After the completion of the Alfa Aesar divestment the Fine Chemicals division will have two principal business units left: API Manufacturing and Catalysis & Chiral Technologies. What are the strategic plans for both businesses?

J. Fowler: Our API Manufacturing and Catalysis & Chiral Technologies business units together provide our complete range of custom products and services for companies developing pharmaceuticals, agrochemicals and other specialty chemicals. Within these business units we have numerous specialized technologies and capabilities that our teams can draw upon. We work collaboratively across the ten different global sites within these business units to deliver customers’ products and solve their complex chemistry challenges.

Over the past few decades, we have built the Fine Chemicals Division on a number of high quality brands that retained individual identities and operations. Recently, we have been realigning our service capabilities across the API Manufacturing and Catalysis & Chiral Technologies business units to develop a single, cohesive brand. The unified brand brings together our diverse chiral and catalysis technologies, our world-leading opiates and narcotics capabilities, and global API development, life cycle management and manufacturing facilities.

Strategically we will be focusing on growth markets where our technologies and capabilities provide us with sustainable competitive differentiation.

How will the rebranding change the structure and organization of these activities?

J. Fowler: The main purpose of the current rebranding is to simplify how we describe our businesses and activities, and enable our customers to recognize and value our capabilities and offerings more fully. We are highlighting our diverse services under four core customer-focused offerings: Custom Pharma Solutions, Controlled Substances, Catalysts, and APIs & Life Cycle Management.

We believe that this will help customers to understand more clearly the breadth and depth of Johnson Matthey Fine Chemicals technologies and capabilities, and how our offerings can support them to achieve their own business goals.

Which market trends do you see as most important for your businesses?

J. Fowler: The pharmaceutical industry remains under increasing pressure to discover and develop innovative products, and quickly bring these successfully to the market. We’re finding that both innovator and generics companies require more R&D expertise and specialist chemistry capabilities from their partners, but very few companies can provide these in breadth and on a global scale. Customers come to us for our unique expertise in solving the most challenging chemistry and engineering scale-up problems to enable more innovative synthetic routes.

The ability to combine this with our large-scale, global manufacturing services is also important for accelerating project delivery. Having a partner that can provide development, scale-up and commercialization aspects of customer projects saves significantly on the time and complexity that would be required in switching to a new supplier. It also helps to reduce risk and protect the customer’s IP, as well as maintain the integrity of the supply chain, which are all matters of increasing concern for fine chemicals companies.

Our core capabilities – especially in and around catalysis and sustainable technologies – are becoming increasing valued by affiliated industries such as agroscience and flavor & fragrances, as the technical challenges are often similar to those found in the pharma industry. We continue to see these industries as important sources of growth for our catalysts and chiral technologies.

Which customer requirements will the new structure cater to?

J. Fowler: As described above we will continue to supply pharmaceutical and biotech companies of all sizes. We do however recognize that these different custom segments in the pharma space have specific needs; for example the requirements of large pharma customers differ from small-mid pharma and the biotechs. So as we begin to focus on our core offerings we’ll also be focusing on customer segments and how our capabilities and technologies can enable then to achieve their specific business objectives. Similarly so for agrochemicals and other specialty chemicals developers, worldwide.

Which activities will be added or emphasized under the new structure?

J. Fowler: As discussed, we have four core offerings. Custom Pharma Solutions is focused on enabling innovative pharma companies with their product development and commercialization. Controlled Substances has been a core offering for Johnson Matthey Fine Chemicals for 200 years, and we’ll continue with our market leading position in the supply of scheduled products. In addition to this, we have an extensive portfolio of APIs and continue to add to our offering through our Life Cycle management services. Of course catalysis is also at the heart of Johnson Matthey and we’ll continue to be a leading provider of homogeneous and heterogeneous catalysts and biocatalysts to the life science industries.

What advantages should customers expect as a result of the rebranding?

J. Fowler: Customers will continue to receive our exemplary standards of service and quality across all of their projects. One of our aims with the rebranding is to improve people’s understanding of the complete scope of our services, and enable easier access for customers to any of our areas of expertise. The unified branding and positioning of the Fine Chemicals Division rely on great knowledge sharing between our teams in order to advance product development and bring significant value to customers’ projects.

What will be the key technologies and key differentiators to position the new Fine Chemicals division in the market?

J. Fowler: The Fine Chemicals Division is built on a 200-year history that has always had technology and innovation at its core. Our advanced fine and specialty chemicals products and our API development services are supported through an extensive portfolio of differentiating technologies. They include an unmatched portfolio of chiral and catalyst technologies, with both chemocatalysis and biocatalysis platforms; significant experience in handling highly potent APIs and controlled substances; expertise in drug-conjugate and polymer-conjugate technologies; chromatography from small- to large-scale; and process and analytical technologies and solid form sciences.

We’re known for our particular expertise in solving complex chemistry problems, from handling complex molecules that require lengthy synthesis to finding appropriate tools to solve new complex problems for customers.

Our infrastructure makes us an ideal commercialization partner: we have deep expertise in R&D, chemistry, and engineering but also large-scale capabilities – through our extensive global manufacturing infrastructure – supported by the firm financial base of the Johnson Matthey corporation.

Will the proceeds of the Alfa Aesar divestment be reinvested into the Fine Chemicals division in order to add new technologies?

J. Fowler: We continue to invest across Johnson Matthey in areas that will differentiate and strengthen our technology offerings to customers, including within the Fine Chemicals Division. However, in the absence of any material acquisitions, there are other options, such as the return of excess capital to shareholders.