INTERVIEW | NEWS
Main image: The purchase of the former Celanese compounding operation at Ferrara in Italy increases Benvic’s capacity and adds new businesses beyond PVC
Benvic details future strategy that builds on PVC expertise
Long-established in the European PVC compounding sector, Benvic CEO Luc Mertens details the company’s strategic move into new polymers and geographies
Above: Benvic CEO Luc Mertens sees opportunities in PVC and in other areas
www.compoundingworld.com
Over more than 50 years as part of the Solvay Group, Benvic established itself as a significant player in the premix and PVC com- pounds business — particu- larly in France, Italy and Spain — but otherwise maintained a fairly low profile. However, divestment
in 2014 laid the foundations for change and its 2017 acquisition by InvestIndus- trial set the company on a new strategic course of growth through geographi- cal and product portfolio expansion. The InvestIndustrial acquisition marked a huge change in the company’s development, according to Benvic CEO Luc Mertens. “It was clear we had a lot of opportunity to grow in PVC but also in other areas and regions,” he says. With eight strategic investments completed since 2018 — the most recent the purchase of the former Celanese-owned compounding plant at Ferrara in Italy earlier this year
— he believes the company is well on the road to realising those opportunities. The series of acquisitions has seen Benvic’s annual sales grow from a 2016 level of around €175m to €244m in 2019. Mertens says sales dropped by around 5% to €230m in 2020, which he considers a good result given the impact of the pandemic on the global economy. However, he forecasts a 2021 result of around €270m based on its Q1 activity levels. The sales figures track the
growth of the business, but not the shift in its market focus. Back in 2016, Mertens says near 80% of Benvic’s sales came from the
April 2021 | COMPOUNDING WORLD 17
IMAGE: BENVIC
IMAGE: BENVIC
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