Global Business Summit Europe 2020

Leigh is Chemical Watch News & Insight's Managing Editor and was previously in charge of our global business coverage. Prior to joining the company, Leigh wrote for the Press Association, ICIS and edie.net, covering a range of environmental and business related topics.

Over the past 20 years Richard held positions in the area of business development and innovation in the pharmaceutical and chemical industry. He is currently Head of Sustainability Transformation at Clariant, a unit combining sustainability thought leadership with innovation and operational expertise to drive the operations of Clariant towards climate neutrality and zero pollution as well as to support the transformation of the product portfolio towards sustainability.

Anne-Sofie Bäckar has worked with chemical management for 22 years and for the past 17 years as the Executive Director of ChemSec. Under her tenure as Executive Director, ChemSec has grown into a well-respected player in the chemicals world and developed world-class chemicals management tools such as the SIN List and the Marketplace. Before joining ChemSec, she worked for the consumer organisations in the Nordic countries, where she monitored chemical issues from a consumer perspective. As a scientist, she started her career with biotechnology research on diseases. She has been a member of the Executive Committee of IPEN (2008 -2020), a board member of the Centre for Chemical Substitution (2018-2021) and a Member of the Supervisory Board at the Swedish Chemical Inspectorate (2022-today).

Marianne is Brenntag representative in national sector organization Kemi & Life Science, European sector organisation, Fecc; chairman in Fecc's committee for circular economy and partner in projects on circular chemistry funded by the Danish ECO Innovation Program. 

From 2016 to today, Head of Group Procurement Services, Clariant. Previous positions include Head of Business Lines Flame Retardants and Head of Business Line Masterbatches Europe at Clariant.

Oscar is a sustainable chemicals specialist at Kingfisher’s Offer and Sourcing organisation. He leads Kingfisher’s strategy to make plastics more sustainable. This strategy is phasing out chemicals from Kingfisher’s own branded products and also increasing the volume of recycled plastics used to make products. In the last 2 years he has delivered training to hundreds of manufacturers in Europe and Asia on these topics. At Kingfisher he gives guidance to the Green Chemistry & Commerce Council and ChemSec.

Frank has more than 20 years’ leadership experience in developing and establishing multi-stakeholder initiatives. In his career, he co-founded and managed leading associations on national and European level. He served on high-performance advisory boards and is sharing his expertise in with leading environmental initiatives. He started his role as Executive Director with ZDHC Foundation, a multi-stakeholder-organisation based in Amsterdam, in August 2015.

Baskut Tuncak is the executive director of the Massachusetts Toxics Use Reduction Institute (TURI), an independent, state-level agency created in 1989 to prevent pollution and protect workers from hazardous substances.

Recently Andrea took over the new task in the field of work-related disease, radiation protection law and product safety, Before she was responsible for enforcement of occupational health and market surveillance of products.  She has over 15 years of experience in the field of national and European legislation. On national and European Level, she was involved in planning and evaluating of the REACH Enforcement Project 1. She contributed in several working groups of Forum at European Chemicals Agency.

Marco is Director General of Cefic since May 2016. With a team of 160 and members adding over 550 billion Euro to the EU economy annually, Cefic is the largest industry sector representation of its kind in Brussels. Cefic unites 22 national federations, 8 associate federations and 650 members and affiliates from all over Europe. It hosts over 70 different sector groups. Virtually all large global and local chemical companies with production facilities in Europe are Cefic members.

Since 2015, Carlo is in charge of the "Chemicals and consumer industry" Directorate, which is responsible mainly for the chemicals-related activities. This covers both the EU chemicals regulations (REACH, CLP, Fertilizers and several others) and policy initiatives as chemicals in the Circular economy and the European Strategy for Plastics. Furthermore, the Directorate is responsible for trade negotiations of processed agricultural products (PAPs) and some other EU legislations as Metrology, Toys Safety and Cosmetics.

Hans graduated as food technologist at Wageningen University in 1987. Since 2000, he works at Tata Steel Europe, Research Development and Technology, for several years on development of packaging. During this period he specialises in Regulatory Affairs. Hans now works as manager Regulatory Affairs, Packaging (mainly legislation on food contact and REACH). In this role he works on information for customers and authorities and is involved in regulatory discussions with stakeholders in order to facilitate and protect packaging innovations.

As the director of strategy for regulatory in Europe, Shawn is the subject matter expert responsible for bringing together suppliers, manufacturers and consultants from the Chemical industry and support them in all regulatory and quality management challenges.

Since 2005 Timo has been working in the European R&D Center of Hyundai & Kia Motor Company as Environmental Affairs Manager & is member of working groups such as the IMDS Steering Committee, the European GADSL Group. Since September 2007 he has chaired the Automotive Industry Task Force on REACH & since 2013 the WG Materials & Substances of the EU vehicle manufacturers association. He is member of the UNEP Steering Group for the CiP Program.

Ralph studied precision mechanics at Aalen University of Applied Sciences. Since 1991, Graduated Engineer (FH). In 1992, he joined the Automotive Electronics Division of the Robert Bosch GmbH for the development of electronic control units. Since more than 20 years, he now serves as an expert for Product specific environmental protection. He has represented the Automotive Electronics Divisions in numerous industry working groups related to environmental topics. At the ZVEI he acts as a Vice Chairman of the Working Group “Environment and Packaging”.

Elise has been working for EEB on chemicals policies and focuses on detoxifying the emerging circular economy thanks to chemicals regulations and policies. From REACH-chemicals, to the interface between chemicals products and waste, to plastics or nanotechnologies, she covers a wide range of issues.

Bo, a Belgian national with more than ten years of experience at the European Chemicals Agency, has been leading the project to set up the Scip database of articles containing Candidate List substances as foreseen by the Waste Framework Directive.

Christer is the Technical & Environmental Director of Stena Recycling International. He also chairs the Waste & Chemicals Task Force of EuRIC, the European Recycling Industries’ Confederation. Since 2011, Christer has been Adjunct Professor in Industrial Material Recycling at Chalmers University. He has published more than 25 papers in reputed journals and has been serving as a board member in many recycling organizations.

Dirk is an economic engineer by education and the executive director of Ökopol. Besides strategic and conceptual advice for all fields of the institute’s activities, he is as a team leader involved in the project work and high level consultancy services concerning resource efficiency, environmentally sound products and chemicals policy.

Frederik is responsible for REACHLaw Sales. Since 2004, he has been working in depth with EU Chemicals Regulations: REACH and CLP as well as REACH-like regulations globally including UK REACH, Turkey KKDIK and Eurasia REACH. As of late, the interphase between product and waste legislation has also become an area of interest.

Mike is a Director of CLC and a consultant to EURITS (the EU association of companies operating hazardous waste incinerators).  He has a background in environmental science and has worked environmental and technical legislative issues for over 15 years. Mike is an industry representative on a number of environmental and waste management bodies at both EU and global level.

Aidan is Director of BOMcheck, an industry-led substances declarations web database, and the EC4P web database system for WEEE, Batteries and Packaging compliance. In 2003 Aidan wrote the UK Government Guidelines on WEEE and RoHS compliance that companies must abide by in order to remain compliant. In 2008 he represented the European Union medical device industry in RoHS Directive negotiations with the European Commission.

Myriam joined the Tarkett Group where she holds the position of Sustainability and Public affairs director for the EMEA division. Since 2015, she participates in the activities of European industry associations. Myriam chairs the EuPC Building and Construction Division, as well as the AFNOR X30M Commission on Circular Economy. Furthermore, she co-chaired the CE100 co-project Mass Balance, leading to the report “Enabling a circular economy for chemicals with the mass balance approach” published by the Ellen McArthur Foundation.

Kate Lowe joined the regulatory information service Chemical Watch News & Insight as managing editor in 2020, becoming head of editorial in 2022. A politics graduate, she has worked as an editor, launch editor and business director across numerous business and professional sectors. These include commercial property, information technology, estates management, social care and, most recently, commercial horticulture where she campaigned successfully to secure public funds for applied agricultural research.  

Ingrid leads REACHLaw’s global marketing efforts. Since 2008 she has advised international companies on chemical regulatory compliance regarding REACH and REACH-like regulations and lately she is also helping companies to become aware of the SCIP notification requirements under the revised EU WDF. In recent years, Ingrid has followed closely the developments of the circular economy in the EU.