R INTERVIEW Tim Probert – Editor, Personal Care Global 17
Personal Care is not the only one celebrating a significant anniversary. This summer, Croda held a 100th birthday party at Cowick Hall, its global headquarters in Yorkshire, England. Editor Tim Probert caught up with Consumer Care president Sandra Breene – who herself is marking a major milestone this year – to share her considerable industry insight
Tim Probert (TP): How did Croda’s birthday party go? Sandra Breene (SB): We had a week of celebrations at Cowick Hall, including an exhibition about our journey over the last 100 years, with different rooms that focused on four key areas. One was around innovation, one around sustainability, one around globalisation, and one around our people. It told the story from 1925 up
to the present day. We exhibited some amazing things. We even found the first delivery note for the first three barrels of lanolin that were shipped in 1925 from our Rawcliffe Bridge manufacturing site to the nearby train station by horse and cart!
TP: I understand you joined Croda in 1990, some 35 years ago, as a graduate trainee. SB: Well, 1990 was my official start date, because that was when I joined on a permanent basis. But I had two years of holiday jobs, so my first paid work with Croda was actually in 1988!
TP: Holiday jobs? SB: I was in my second year of studying chemistry at university. My dad was boasting in our local pub about the fact he had a daughter at university studying chemistry, and a maintenance manager at the Croda factory in Doncaster overheard him and said I should apply for a summer job. By chance, the managing
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director’s secretary was a good friend of mine from school. She opened my letter and told the MD I should have a summer internship, and they contacted me.
TP: What was your career path with Croda after joining as a trainee? SB: I started in the R&D lab for lanolin wool grease derivative products – Croda’s earliest products. That’s the wonder of Croda, 100 years later we’re still selling drums of lanolin around the world to the beauty and the pharmaceutical industry. I think that is quite special. I did three years in R&D
roles. I was also involved in commissioning one of our liquid extraction plants, so I had some really good early experience in manufacturing and technical. Then, one day, I had the opportunity to cover someone’s maternity leave in sales for three months as a rep. After the three months, I went back to the lab. But the sales director rang me up and said, ‘Are you sure you want to go back to the lab, or would you prefer a career in sales?’. I said, ‘Oh, definitely sales’. So,
I went to Cowick Hall and did a whole host of sales and marketing roles. Then, in 1999, I was asked to step back from my role for a year to lead on the implementation of our first ERP (enterprise resource planning) software system. It was kind of a strange thing to do IT for a year, but it was
INTERVIEW
Milestones and memories
a brilliant way to learn how a business really works and how things are connected, from purchasing all the way through to invoicing. Fantastic experience.
TP: And knowing more about any hidden secrets, I suppose. SB: Then, in 2000, as that project ended, I was asked to be the sales director for the Asian region. We packed our bags, went off to Singapore and had five wonderful years. It was super exciting to build our position in Asia. In 2006, I was asked if I could
come back to the UK because Croda was in the process of acquiring Uniqema from ICI. I had
the job of exiting the distributors they used. Croda has a direct-to- customer model whereas Uniqema had a very complex distribution and sub-distribution model. I wasn’t very popular in the industry with distributors for a while! After that, I ran different parts
of our business, our personal care business, then our healthcare business. By 2010, our then CEO said I’d shown that I can run consumer-focused businesses. But, if I’m really going to prove myself, I had to run our industrial business. And not just run it, but with the same kind of margins we had in the consumer-focused businesses. I did that for a couple of
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