Colloids Group has recently appointed Dr Craig MacDougall as General Manager for Colloids Plastic (Suzhou) Co. Ltd. He joined the company in March after 22 years with Americhem Europe where he held a number of technical and management leadership executive roles including Technical Manager, Director of Operations EMAE and General Manager.
Dr MacDougall is relocating with his family to China, and will be living in Changshu, about two hours north west of Shanghai where Colloids’ masterbatch manufacturing plant and R & D facilities are located, which started operations in 2016. He will be responsible for the day to day running of Colloids’ operations in China and helping to grow the business in China and other Asian markets, which has become an increasingly important region for the company.
Russell Livesey, CEO of Colloids Group said: “We have an ambitious growth plan in the coming years in China and Asia, and so we are delighted to be able to bring Craig into the executive team to head up Colloids China and help drive the business forward in the region. With his many years’ experience working in the masterbatch industry combined with his commercial, operational and technical expertise, I feel confident that the Colloids China business is in very capable hands and will deliver excellent results and performance under his leadership.”
MacDougall’s business experience from his time with Americhem is combined with impressive technical and commercial qualifications, which include a first-class honours degree from Heriot Watt University (Edinburgh) in Applied Chemistry (1992), a PhD from the University of Leeds (1995), where he researched novel methods of colouring polyamides with reactive dyes, along with an MBA from Manchester Metropolitan University (2005).
One of the very first events the new General Manager is involved with is supporting the Colloids commercial and technical teams on the stand (8.2 E75) during Chinaplas 2018 next week, at which new products are being launched: the new T-TEC® range of high-temperature engineering polymer masterbatch and compounds, plus 11 newly developed permanent electrically conductive and electrostatically dissipative (ESD) compound grades, expanding the existing E-TEC® product range. The new products are aimed at key industrial markets with high performance applications, used in automotive, electrical & electronics (E & E) and ESD packaging, storage and distribution applications.
Colloids provides a combination of locally manufactured products in China alongside a variety of specialty products which are supplied from Colloids’ main UK production operations at Knowsley in the North of England. The successful business growth in Asia by Colloids has been recently recognized by the DIT North West region which named Colloids as the winner of the Greater China 2018 Business Award, presented at the end of February.
Colloids Group is part of the multinational Tosaf Group, with sister companies in Germany, Turkey, The Netherlands, Israel and the USA, offering a global service to the plastics industry for high quality black, white and colour masterbatches, compounds and performance enhancing additive masterbatches. All manufacturing sites meet ISO 9001 quality standards, with both Colloids Knowsley and Colloids Plastics (Suzhou) Co Ltd. having automotive industry IATF 16949:2016 certification; the environmental management at Knowsley is also ISO 14001 accredited. Colloids supplies the automotive, agricultural, E&E, construction, pipe, geosynthetic and consumer markets, as well as polymer producers and compounders worldwide.