WELCOME Messe Basel hosted more than 4,000 ChemSpec attendees. PHOTO BY MAUREEN ROUHI

The mood was upbeat. Exhibitors were busy, even when attendees who were soccer fans took breaks to watch the World Cup semifinal match between Brazil and Turkey on a large screen set up by the organizers. Exhibitors were particularly pleased at the show's size. Many remarked that ChemSpec is more focused than the Conference on Pharmaceutical Ingredients, another annual exhibition in Europe that many fine chemicals companies attend.

ChemSpec is "cozy," noted Peter van Tilburg, director of new business development at ChemShop, a contract R&D company. "It's small enough that people walk the same aisles three or four times, and eventually they come in to your booth and chat."

ChemSpec attracts good-quality visitors, according to Heinz Sieger, general manager of CU Chemie Uetikon, a fine chemicals manufacturer based in Lahr, Germany. "All the big pharma customers are here. And they are focused about doing business."

James A. Michalski, marketing communications manager for Eastman Chemical, pointed out that ChemSpec also attracts a diverse crowd. Over the years, he said, Eastman has broadened its offerings at this show in response to customer queries.

THE RANGE of exhibitors reflected the breadth of products and services displayed at ChemSpec: from agricultural intermediates to waxes. Some of the major players--such as Bayer, Dow, DSM, Eastman Chemical, Honeywell, Lonza, and Rhodia--conferred with customers in fully staffed, elaborate booths offering lavish hospitality. On the other hand, manufacturers from China worked away in spartan cubicles with only a desk, a few chairs, and product lists on the walls.

The conference on chemical specialties that has previously accompanied ChemSpec was not held this year. Two weeks before the show, the organizer--the British Association for Chemical Specialities--canceled the conference because of "lack of support."

Like other exhibitions, ChemSpec is an opportunity for suppliers to display the range of their products and services, as well as to highlight recent developments of interest to customers.

Bayer, for example, touted the recently installed CGMP (Current Good Manufacturing Practice) kilolab facility at its Central Organics Pilot Plant (ZeTO) in Leverkusen, Germany. Wilhelm Stahl, head of R&D for Bayer's fine chemicals business unit, told C&EN that this addition fills the missing piece to qualify Bayer as a supplier of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) over the full range of production scales for drug development.

The kilolab facility will produce APIs for preclinical studies and early-phase clinical trials. "A lot of project offers come at this stage," Stahl said. "More and more, pharmaceutical companies are looking to share the risks of early-phase drug development. With the kilolab plant, it is now possible for Bayer to be a partner very early on."

Meanwhile, Dow Chemical promoted its Dow Haltermann Custom Processing (DHCP) business. Dow established this business last year by combining the original contract manufacturing services business with three recent acquisitions: Haltermann Custom Processing and Mitchell Cotts Chemicals, both acquired in 2001, and Hampshire Chemical Corp., acquired in 1998.

With its assets, DHCP offers non-cGMP contract services to a broad range of non-pharma-related industries. Services to the pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical industries have been consolidated in Dow's contract pharmaceutical services business.

Robinson Brothers Ltd., a specialty chemicals manufacturer based in West Bromwich, England, unveiled a new corporate identity at ChemSpec 2002. "We came to ChemSpec to announce it, because this is the biggest show of its type in Europe," the managing director, Brian Murphy, told C&EN. "If you're looking for chemistry, you come here."

"This is the biggest show of its type in Europe. If you're looking for chemistry, you come here."

The new identity is built on investments in new technology and R&D. And it is supported by a total revamp of the company's culture and business processes--with more emphasis on innovation and flexibility than at any time before in the company's 133-year history, Murphy said.

These changes, Murphy explained, are based on moving away from old product lines, where profits came from selling large volumes, to high-value-added products and services. Examples include the specialty amines introduced at ChemSpec, such as the pharmaceutical intermediate N-benzylethanolamine.

Rhodia touted chlorine-free acids prepared by air oxidation of aldehydes, a technology developed by its Perfumery & Specialties Enterprise. According to Hervé Bres, the enterprise's process development manager, the new technology, based on a palladium catalyst on carbon, has a lower environmental impact than the old sodium chlorite method and produces better quality products. For example, vanillic acid prepared from vanillin the old way contains as much as 1,250-ppm chlorine, whereas the product of air oxidation holds less than 2.5-ppm chlorine.

Several companies debuted at ChemSpec 2002, including AllessaChemie GmbH, based in Frankfurt. It was founded on July 1, 2001, through acquisition of several assets from Clariant. These include Clariant's Cassella-Offenbach site, which dates back to a tar distillery founded in 1842, and part of Clariant's Frankfurt-Griesheim site, where the world's first chlor-alkali electrolysis plant was established.

The company makes products that are used in the pigment, textile dye, polymer, paper, and specialty chemical industries. It also manufactures active ingredients for pharmaceutical and agrochemical customers. It offers custom synthesis along with its own line of chemical products.

?lso appearing at ChemSpec for the first time this year was IEP GmbH, based in Wiesbaden, Germany. The company, formerly named Jülich Enzyme Products, specializes in process development for chiral synthesis based on biocatalysis, said its chief executive officer, Ortwin Ertl.

Ertl touted a new group of reductases that convert a-ketoesters into a-hydroxyesters. The reaction requires an expensive cofactor, NADPH. To be viable commercially, the process must regenerate the cofactor. Systems developed by others usually have product/cofactor ratios of 1,000, whereas the IEP process has a turnover of more than 100,000, Ertl told C&EN. "Not only is it more economical, but it also tolerates a higher concentration of product, up to 25% compared with the usual 1% in other systems," he added.

Products that have been made at an enantiomeric excess of at least 99% include both enantiomers of ethyl 4-chloro-3-hydroxybutyrate. Rütgers Chemicals is already making large-scale quantities of ethyl (S)-4-chloro-3-hydroxybutyrate based on the IEP process. The two companies are collaborating on other systems for enzymatic organic synthesis.

MEANWHILE, the contract research company Avantium Technologies, based in Amsterdam, promoted its process development expertise. The company specializes in applying high-throughput technologies and proprietary software to process development. Data from high-throughput experiments are transformed into knowledge through statistical analysis, kinetic modeling, and process simulation, Jason D. King, vice president for business development, told C&EN. "The result is rapid process optimization, not a data graveyard."

Its services have attracted interest from a diverse clientele. For example, Avantium is helping to discover new and better catalytic systems for DSM's life sciences business; optimizing the catalysts used in Millennium Cell's hydrogen storage systems; and, with Malaysia's Universiti Malaya, developing processes to make high-value products from palm oil.

"Unless one can interpret the mass of data, high-throughput experiments have very limited value," King said. The skills to make data meaningful are not easily assembled in chemical and pharmaceutical companies. "We have chemists, chemical engineers, and data analysts working on the same project teams," he explained. "The integration of these data management skills with experimental activities is what makes Avantium unusual and attractive."

The closing bell rang promptly at 4 PM on the final day. But in some booths, discussions continued even as neighboring stands were being torn down. Next year, the show will be held in Manchester, England.

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Copyright © 2002 American Chemical Society