Supply Chain Collaboration to Advance Acceptance of Biobased Technologies By Mike Guggenheimer, CEO and President

April 23, 2016

Last month, I had the opportunity to attend and present at the 11th annual World Bio Markets in Amsterdam. As I met the leaders of the biobased industry and listened to various presentations and panel discussions, I reflected upon the challenges and opportunities that our industry is facing.

One of the main takeaways from the conference, and also the topic of my presentation, is the importance of forming partnerships to de-risk, create speed and maximize value in supply chain synergy.

In today’s world, companies are increasingly turning to business partnerships and strategic alliances to share knowledge and market resources. These alliances can provide access to new markets, technology and other resources, ultimately allowing them to better respond to customer needs.

With growing global regulations and increasing performance demands, it is more important than ever that companies form innovative supply chain partnerships with shared goals and complementary capabilities.

My presentation with Jeffrey Brown, CEO of Novvi LLC, provided an example of a successful partnership between a base oil supplier and an end product formulator, aimed at developing innovative biobased technologies and expanding into new markets. In our presentation, we addressed how we could better respond to end users’ needs, how biotechnology solves the problems and how the partnership aids commercialization through speed, credibility and technical synergy. Together RSC Bio Solutions and Novvi LLC are working to create the next generation of lubricants that will not only meet current and future environmental regulations, but will also offer superior operational performance, improved longevity in field, superior sustainability profile and feasible lifecycle cost. I look forward to our continued relationship and to revealing more details later this year.

As the sessions were going on throughout World Bio Markets 2016, the partnering hub and meeting rooms were full of activity, which is just another testament to the fact that while knowledge sharing and the telling of success stories are key, it is even more important to create a platform for the next wave of partnerships to develop. It became clear that a lot of the same challenges are shared across the industry, a lot can be learnt from one another and there is great overlap in business models.

I would like to end with one of my favorite quotes from the conference keynote speaker that sums up the importance of forward thinking in supply chain collaboration perfectly: “It takes great minds, great partnerships, very forward thinking and a huge amount of innovation to create a success in the bioeconomy.”

I look forward to many more future successful partnerships. Please feel free to contact me or a member of my team.

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