Air Products announces major company restructuring

Air Products' Chairman, President and CEO, Seifi Ghasemi, has announced a major company restructuring, with the goal of regaining industry leadership by providing excellent service to customers as the safest and most profitable industrial gas company in the world.

Ghasemi explained that he has already met and communicated with thousands of Air Products' employees who are ready for change and are committing to a new corporate culture in order to meet this objective.

Future success

Commenting on the restructure, Ghasemi added: "Today we are taking a major step to restructure for future success. Air Products had the industry leadership position 20 years ago and maintains leading market positions in key regions. We will regain that leadership position by first reorganising our Industrial Gases segment on a geographic basis, and move to a decentralised, simpler, and more efficient structure which creates true profit and loss (P&L) accountability at many levels of the organisation. The people at Air Products are ready to advance this great company, and I am excited by the significant opportunities in front of us.”

Segment descriptions

Effective at the start of Air Products' 2015 fiscal year (1 October 2014), the company will realign into seven reporting segments:

• Industrial Gases will comprise four reporting segments and will include all Air Separation Units (ASUs), Hydrogen/HyCO plants (hydrogen, carbon monoxide and syngas), and the current Merchant Gases segment. Reflecting greater regional focus, over 95% of current Industrial Gases revenues will be contained in the geographic segments of Americas; Asia; and Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA).
• Materials Technologies will include the Electronics Materials and Performance Materials businesses and will continue to operate as a global business.
• Energy-from-Waste will include the two Tees Valley projects in the UK.
• A Corporate segment will include two global businesses (LNG and Helium containers) and corporate supporting functions.

Organisation

Accountable for implementing this new alignment and reporting directly to Ghasemi are:

• Corning Painter, Executive VP, Industrial Gases worldwide
• Guillermo Novo, Executive VP, Materials Technologies
• Scott Crocco, Senior VP and CFO
• John Stanley, Senior VP, General Counsel and Chief Administration Officer
• Pam Mattimore, Senior VP, Engineering and Manufacturing
• David Taylor, VP, Energy-from-Waste
• Jennifer Grant, VP and Chief HR Officer
• Kearney Klein, VP, Corporate Development
• Jeff Byrne, VP, HyCO and Large ASU Center of Excellence

Targeted focus

Additionally, Ghasemi stated that employee meetings have given him an assurance that Air Products' people are serious about adopting a new, rigorous company culture with a targeted focus and a team dedicated to:

• Safety – establishing a goal of zero accidents;
• Simplicity – implementing a simple, empowered, accountable organisation and work processes;
• Speed – business and project execution with a sense of urgency;
• Self-confidence – in Air Products' ability to achieve outstanding results by setting challenging performance targets.

Adapted from press release by Katie Woodward

Read the article online at: https://www.lngindustry.com/liquid-natural-gas/23092014/air-products-restructure-1444/