EDITOR INTERVIEW In conversation with...
Andrew Gelder, Technical Product and Sales Development Manager - Lubricants, IMCD UK Limited
When I joined the industry in March 2022, I bumped into Andrew Gelder and Emma Guthrie from IMCD at ChemUK and we have been firm friends ever since. As I continue my series of personal interviews, who better to ask than Dr Gelder himself! Always a joy to see, I hope you enjoy this brief window into Andrew’s career and life.
Where/when were you born & bit about family/ early years? I was born in 1966, just before England lifted the football World Cup and I was hopeful that we might have been able to repeat that feat this year, but sadly it was not meant to be. I was born in a town called Guiseley, which is near Leeds in West Yorkshire and its main claim to fame is that it hosts the original, famous, Harry Ramsden’s Fish and Chip shop. I lived there with my parents, who have since moved to Derbyshire, and my sister 3 years my junior. It was a normal childhood and I progressed through the normal state schools before completing my ‘O’ and ‘A’ Levels.
What was your path to higher education? My path to university was the standard way in the UK, applied for various Universities and settled on 2 options before sitting my exams. By this point my career direction was heading towards Chemical Engineering. It came to pass that my ‘A’ Level results were not quite as good as I had hoped and, in the end, I made a last-minute decision to change direction and studied Applied Chemistry at Aston University in Birmingham instead. I had a real love of polymer chemistry and kinetics and tried to steer my work in that direction, but fate had a strong guiding hand on me, and I spent my Industrial year working for company providing services to the foundry industry. This turned out to be very much in my favour as I was the first to secure a Ph.D. contract in my peer group. I successfully completed my Ph.D. in inorganic chemistry in 1992.
48 LUBE MAGAZINE NO.173 FEBRUARY 2023 First job – where and when,
what did you like about it and what did you not? I started as a Development Chemist in the Metalworking team at Castrol. I learnt an amazing amount on the chemistries required for creating the ideal lubricant for each application and that stood me in good stead for the future. I spent 10 years in total at the Castrol Development Centre, in which time I developed, hydraulic oils, industrial gear oils, neat and milky metalworking fluids and many driveline products. I also did some Technical Support for the South American and Africa regions which was mainly on Engine oil products. All in all, I covered a lot of bases in my time at Castrol. I loved being able to get involved, blending the oils, and running a lot of the testing myself. It really built a good strong knowledge base. What I found frustrating was the total reliance on the additive companies as they would provide black boxes for the testing programs, particularly in driveline and engine oils, and I like to be in control of what I am doing so not knowing the chemistry behind the formulation was very difficult for me and helped frame my next career move.
Career mapping how has it lead to where you are now? So if you can’t beat them... join them and from Castrol I took a job at Lubrizol in 2003, the largest lubricant Additive manufacturer where I worked as a program manager in the Engine Oils team. I worked closely with the Technology Managers developing Engine additives specifically for TOTAL and other French oil companies. It was another great chemistry learning experience. I then used my Castrol Driveline experience to move into the Global Technology Manager role for Manual Transmission Fluids (MTFs). Now I really got to play with all the different chemistries, and it was both fun and frustrating trying to navigate your way through all the different OEM specifications to create an ideal additive to meet the multitude of different requirements. Every day was a
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