Interview: Richard Lynch Discusses MacDermid Enthone's Centennial and Looking to the Future

MacDermid is making big investments in the future of its surface finishing business. In September of 2021, the company finalized the acquisition of the surface finishing chemical provider Coventya and it recently announced the acquisition of HSO Herbert Schmitt, a Germany-based manufacturer of specialized chemistry for the surface finishing industry, including plating on plastics, and sustainable plating technologies. In this interview, we sit down with Richard Lynch, Vice President of chemical supplier MacDermid Enthone Industrial Solutions, to hear about the company’s 100-year anniversary and its goals for the future.

This year marks the 100 year anniversary of MacDermid. Can you talk about the significance of this milestone — both for the company and the industry?

When I think about our 100 years, what makes me most excited is not really looking back saying, “boy, we’ve been around for a century!” It’s that we’ve been around for a century and we’ve managed to keep growing and continue to be very relevant. I couldn’t be more excited about the future. This is a great, great time — it’s a very challenging time for the industry and a very challenging time for our business, but I think the rewards are there and the opportunity is there.

What really matters is today and how we position ourselves to support our customers for tomorrow. Where is the industry going? What are the things that are challenging our customers? What do we need to do to resource that and to make sure that we can carry the ball forward and continue to support our customers effectively as we have for the last 100 years?

We acquired Chemtech, a company that specialized in the reclamation and recycling of materials — extremely relevant today. We purchased DMP, an excellent supplier of wastewater, turnkey wastewater treatment systems. Most recently, we finalized the Coventya acquisition, which had some really interesting things that fit into our overall strategy and the strategy and needs of our customers, including wastewater treatment chemistry and specific technologies that help reduce waste in energy use, and chrome-free etch technology, which is a big deal in the plating on plastics sector.

In January, we announced the acquisition of Herbert Schmitt (HSO), who are considered global technical leaders and specialists in decorative technologies (although they have a surprising amount of functional business as well). Their trivalent chrome technology, and their know-how also around chrome-free etch, is all about helping us build the best team possible.

That’s been really our focus, as we’ve, as we’ve gone through these recent growth initiatives — aligning to our customers’ needs, helping to really lead our industry in the markets we serve to a sustainable future.

Can you talk about your ideas and thoughts about innovations and solutions for the megatrends of manufacturing that are happening right now, such as semiconductors and the finishing of electric vehicle (EV) components?

I think for us, it all starts with the customer. There’s the traditional customer we have transactional business with and understanding their needs. But there is also the OEM community and tier-one community for the automotive industry and other industries that we serve. Really, our engagement at that level is key to helping us understand the solutions that we need to bring to market — and the solutions we need to help our customers adopt to bring to market.

For example, if you take the lightweighting of vehicles and EVs, we have this ongoing trend around aluminum finishing — the use of aluminum is increasing significantly year over year (the last 10 years or so it’s a 10% CAGR usage — it’s really rising). Making sure that we have the technologies that apply to those meet the needs of those finishes and those new applications is really important.

These OEMs and tiers want our input and our understanding on what are the technologies available to meet these needs. I don’t think I would be overstepping my bounds to say certainly the need for OEMs to accelerate their electric vehicle understanding has grown massively in just the last couple of years.

We’re able to go to an OEM as an ESI and say, “Hey, if you need to speak to people that are experts in printed circuits, or in semiconductors, or light metal finishes, or traditional finishes, we have all of those experts and expertise in-house that we can bring to bear.” It’s quite an investment by our company, but we believe that ultimately, it’s really important to help the long-term success of our customers achieve their goals. When we’re engaged at that level, we can really be part of the deep understanding of these trends and help provide the solutions that people will need and use.

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Listen to our complete On the Line podcast interview with Richard Lynch: short.pfonline.com/OTL18