Welcome to The Chemical Show, the podcast where chemical means business. I'm your host, Victoria Meyer, bringing you stories and insights from leaders, driving innovation and growth across the chemical industry. Each week, we explore key trends, real world challenges, and the strategies that make an impact. Let's get started.
Hi, welcome back to the Chemical Show. I am here today with Jennifer Abril, who is the CEO of SOCMA. I'm going to let her describe that acronym. It's been three days of great energy, and conversations and topics about the specialty chemical industry. So Jennifer and I are going to be talking about that and more. Jennifer, thanks for joining me.
Victoria, it's great to be with you.
Absolutely. So let's just start with a little bit about you. And then we're going to talk a little bit about SOCMA. So tell us about yourself.
Okay, been in and around chemicals since 1997. I sort of fell into this industry after coming through more of a policy based D. C. background. But I have been Enjoying being part of the specialty chemical sector or any element of the broader specialty chemical sector for all of my career.
Yeah. How long have you been with SOCMA?
So this is my second tour duty with SOCMA. So I worked at SOCMA for three years earlier in my career and I've been in this role for eight and a half years.
Awesome. That's a long
Yeah,
tell us about what is SOCMA? And, and I'm gonna proceed this with a bit of, I attended my first SOCMA show about three years ago, and I was like, wow, I was not, I'm not even aware that this existed and that all of these companies engaged in the chemical industry existed and did what they did. So tell us about SOCMA and its members.
Yeah. I mean, we're, we're an older association. I mean, we're 104 years old. Wow. Yeah. We've been around for a very, very long time. I think one of the fun things that we leaned into when we celebrated our hundredth anniversary, which unfortunately was during COVID. Was the history of the organization.
And so fun fact is that our very first meeting was at the Hotel Washington in Washington, D. C. And our dinner speaker was Herbert Hoover when he was the secretary of commerce and his pitch to us was we need to build a specially chemical sector here to feed our wartime efforts. And, we need a single point of contact. So if you all could get yourselves organized around a trade group, that would be really helpful to the U. S. government. And so hence trade associations were born.
That makes a lot of sense, because I know that as an industry group, you're doing a lot to pull together the various points of view, be a single point of contact when it comes to policy and regulation and, and helping navigate the complex world that we're in.
Yes, we're doing all of that. And I think it's so interesting that the that the impetus for that for the organization was actually a call by the government to please organize yourselves. I have too many conversations with individual companies. Can you please get together and, you know, give us your collective point of view? And that ask is has been prevalent all the way through?
Yeah, that's awesome. And, you know, for a hundred years, as you say. Of course, here we are in 2025 and the government's view on, Maybe everything at the moment is a little different, so we're going to get into that a little bit later. Um, yeah, so, you know, we're sitting here at the SOCMA show, just wrapping up what appears to be a really successful conference. So, talk to me about the SOCMA show and what it is and how this manifests. Yeah,
so for a long time, SOCMA has been involved in, helping businesses find each other, right? So in the contract and toll space and the custom chemical space, there's a lot of finding a needle in a haystack, right? I need just the right partner who can do just the right work for me on just the right time schedule. Our aim at SOCMA is to help bring down the number of Google searches that happen out there and to help people find each other faster.
And we try to do that with curated services and We have a number of business services that help people do that on a regular basis. But it's important that we also have an event where we can get together, have the industry come together and, especially it helps at the beginning of the year, when you're really trying to make sure that you've got your, your projects lined up, and you're, you're trying Trying to work on on shoring up sourcing. That's really important.
So we really like having a Q one event. So it is a trade show, but we're injecting conference like elements so we can bring the rest of what SOCMA works on, which advocacy and safety performance and best practice sharing and business intelligence. All of that we're trying to infuse into the event.
Right. And 1, 300 people this year? Is that what I heard?
1300 people. Yeah. It's been terrific. We had a lot of growth this year. I think a lot of that has to do with interest in domestic production. And our goal, our aim as the organization is to grow the north american, especially chemical environment, the sector.
Yeah.
what we've we've attempted to do here.
Yeah. And you talked a little bit about the matchmaking. And I think one of the things that happens here and for, for people that may or may not know, is a lot of the SOCMA members. Many of them are custom manufacturers, toll manufacturers. I've noticed a lot of, uh, engineering and instrumentation and other groups as well. But so many people that I talk to can't, they're like, Oh, we're here looking for somebody that can help make.
A product that we want to make, or they're here finding somebody that helps fill up their assets. So it's a really unique in a different way, because I think a lot of industry conferences is a lot about speed dating and, you know, securing business for the future. But this happens in such a unique way.
Yeah. And for noticing that. I mean, I was really, touched by somebody who who pulled me aside yesterday morning. The first time she had been to this event. She's been in and around the sector for 30 years, she told me. But what she she complimented us on was the ability to have genuine conversations. She was saying that a lot of events she goes to, especially trade shows are very much A sales energy in the room, but this is a lot of collaboration, and it's a lot of, genuine conversation.
And we've worked really hard to put that part into, um, into this environment and to inject that. So it's really less about the show, and it's really about creating an environment where we can We can make sure those partnerships get done, and I just wanted to interject that, um, for the first time, we've actually, rallied around a theme for this year.
Oh, okay.
Usually trade shows don't carry themes, but we're trying to inject a lot of what SOCMA does into this event as well, so that we can make it more additive and value added. And so, um, the theme that we chose, and it is, uh, appropriate, is adapting supply chains for a changing world.
Mmm.
then we had three different sub themes underneath. One was around trying to understand new innovations and how is AI driving those. Another one is around policy changes. A lot of those
Yeah, a lot of those.
And the third one is about regionalization, localization, what are the changing dynamics there? All of those things are top of mind and it turned out to be really on target.
And I think that piece around localization is so critical. And it ties to that chain story, because I think as across the chemical industry, as supply chains have gotten more expensive, have gotten longer, we've got all the uncertainties around what the tariff picture is, that creating resilient local supply chains, business opportunities becomes really critical.
Absolutely. So one of the things that we have been tracking for the last few years is asking what part of your new inquiries or existing inquiries do you believe have to do with on shoring or reshoring efforts? And it's been really interesting because we haven't had we've had anecdotal data, but we just did a survey going into this conference and asked again. And this is the first time we've really seen a lot of
more.
The theme is very heavy on intentionality around localization. I know the last time we asked about this, there were some anecdotes that said, I think I'm getting new projects because of localization, but it might be that they just aren't. My customers aren't telling me that's the driver. It might be a new project that in other years they might have shopped it to other geographies, but maybe they're shopping it inside of North America now first.
But this year, when we asked again, we saw a jump in more purposeful localization. And that has a lot to do with this changing supply chain and all the global dynamics that are happening.
Absolutely. And I think what's been interesting as well is when you look at the global chemical market, the U. S. continues to be a bright spot, um, in terms of innovation and growth. I saw something, in the Wall Street Journal this morning that just was talking about Germany, which Germany was really, in many ways, the European powerhouse for so many years for chemicals.
And yet what we've seen Over the past year and more is continuous announcements of Asset shutdowns and closures and so in you know, and I also think in the chemical industry a lot of stuff's coming from China but I think you know what you talk about this intentionality of on shoring and reshoring and localization is a reflection of a global dynamic shift in chemical manufacturing
That's exactly right. So we were looking at, you know, we're looking at a changing world, right? Everything is in transition. And if you go back 10 years ago, the world had been pretty stable, right? So we knew where the supply chains were just in time was fine. The logistics for the most part were working. We were starting to see. Pre covid, the idea of plus one, right? China plus one dual sourcing. Then everybody panicked during covid.
Then we had the inventory build up and then the inventory drawdowns
been a rough few
it has.
We always try to try to pull on what's the outlook for the year and coming into this year, you know, interestingly, the especially chemical sector, at least The people that we pull, they just have this underlying perennial optimism going on, and I love that, because each year you come out of the, out of the gate thinking it's going to be a good year or we're at least going to be able to, um, to see some, some pickup, and I think that has a lot to do with, SOCMA members being so diversified too,
you know, that, that really helps when you're, when you have, you know, a variety of customers in lots of markets that are, able to offset each other. Yeah.
Yeah. And you, and you shared earlier that you had coined a phrase coming out of your survey. Yeah. Can you share it with us?
Okay. So, the, the punchline is pragmatic confidence. So I'm going to back into how we got
How does, yeah. What does that mean?
right. So I mentioned, so each year before we come to the show, we do a state of the industry report or an outlook report. And, that's the part that I deliver. So I deliver that on the, on the first morning of the event, we ask all of the people that are in our, our show network as well as all of our members and other contacts that we have to participate in this outlook survey. And then I package that up and I send it, I deliver that in the beginning of the event. It looks good this year.
And ultimately, like I said, you know, some of those, those things we've been tracking for a while are all very much pointed in growth mode, efficiencies and growth are really two trends that came through. We got to pragmatic confidence is at the end of the survey, I asked an open ended question. And we said, okay, last year's phrase was. Cautious optimism. So if cautious optimism defined 2024, what word or phrase do you think describes 2025? And it was all over the map.
Of course it
I literally had somebody, one person that said, endless opportunity, and the very next person that took the survey said bleak.
Oh man. It
it went from one side of the coin to another. So what I did, using AI, right, because that's the fun thing to do now, is I took all of those raw answers and I put it through chatGBT and said, what am I looking at?
Yeah.
And it broke it up into into categories for us. A good 15 percent of people were those super optimists, real strong optimists. And then another 25 percent were kind of the, the solid optimist chart. Another 25 percent were kind of moderate growth, something that was a little bit more measured in their response. And then we had a pretty good clip that said, uncertainty.
If you dig deeper though, in the uncertain category, it really has nothing to do with people just having no idea what's going to happen. It's really about, I'm not prepared to make a call because I see this happening, this happening, this happening, and this happening. And they may not actually, um, those things may be in conflict with each other, or there may be some issues that get in the way of what I'm. hopeful for, which is a stronger business operating environment.
So when you take all of that and kind of distill it down and we kept working on the language where we landed was that there is confidence, there is confidence out there, but people are being extremely pragmatic about it. They are informed. They are watching, they are monitoring, and they know that they're going to have to be agile and, and keep a very close eye to make those little tacks along the way, to make sure that they're put, they're still in a good position.
we ended up with pragmatic confidence, which I think really underscores the general business climate.
I agree. And I think it also underscores the nature of this group of companies inside a SOCMA. I think that's just, it's a good categorization of that. What can you share about the rest of the cervix? I know you collected a lot of different information is, you know, what two or three things stand out for that?
So the first thing we asked is, okay, so you coming into this year, what's your growth outlook? And people are anywhere, 97
nine. 7
percent of the people that took the survey are either stable or greater than 5 percent growth. So, you know, it's sort of,
Looking for growth this
Yeah, so growth is expected only about three percent
but pragmatic growth, because up to 5 percent is not crazy.
not crazy but it's incremental and it's reliable,
Yes. Yes.
there's still this underneath, there's this hope that all of the factors that are coming together will really create a surge, right? And they are prepared and ready for it. They're ready and waiting. So good, good growth for this year, right? Um, we also asked questions about, you know, adoption of technologies and automation. And so back to the efficiency question. There are a lot of people that when we asked last year, where were we on automation? A little less adoption.
Um, and we're looking at automation across and technology adoption, I should say. Across a lot of different different elements. But that also leads into the efficiency and the growth ideas. Other questions we asked was about mitigating risks. What are you doing to look at tariffs? understanding where tariffs are a number of different things. So, um, we'll be publishing those results and putting them on linked in. So,
Great. And I'm, and hopefully, can I get a copy of that? We'll include the link to it in our show notes and on our website so people can
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And we do, we, we do surveys throughout the year. A lot of things that are anecdotal, 'cause we're trying to get a pulse and we, we literally call them our pulse polls. So we do these surveys across the year about different things that, that come
Yeah. Well, and I've seen them come through and what I would say is, what I appreciate about the surveys that you do is that they feel very real. Sometimes, you know, surveys come through and you're like, oh gosh, I mean, who knows? But I think back to the whole pragmatic confidence that underpins SOCMON and its members, it's their pragmatic surveys as well to really assess what's going on in business.
Yeah, I mean, we're trying to be spot on to what's, what, what is the driver? What do people need to know right now? A couple years ago we were looking at, destocking trends. So we were keeping track of those. So it's really about, you know, what's happening in business right now. And that can be additive to all of the economic, indicators that people are reading.
Yeah. You touched on this as we talked about the survey, but when you think about the outlook for specialty and custom chemicals and manufacturing, what does that look like when we look into to 2025 and beyond? So
SOCMA Vision 2030, and that is a belief in a strategy that we can position North America as the preferred geography for specialty chemical manufacturing. There are a lot of really positive things happening in the U. S. or conditions here in the U. S. A stable business climate. relatively speaking, right, with more business friendly, advances to be made. Um, strong energy and, energy that is cost efficient. We have a strong workforce, high quality outputs, and we have open capacity.
And so all of those things make the U. S. Or at least North America, a really strong contender. to be that central hub. And as I said earlier, that is our aim as an organization, is to seize, seize those opportunities.
I think that's great. And I'm looking forward to the outputs of that. One of the things you talked about, and maybe I know you had an economist on stage as well today, talking about workforce development, right? So obviously it's great to bring these roles. It's great to grow the industry. And yet it feels like when I talk to people, we're still in a bit of a talent shortage. The ability to attract people to the chemical industry, it can be tough at times, right?
So there's a reason that many of the people that are in the industry have parents that have been in the industry. There's a lot of legacy that occurs. But I also know that SOCMA takes some, that you guys are really doing some work around workforce development and supporting that. So what does that look like for you?
And I think, you know, workforce development is such a large, and perennial concern, um, for all of the industry sectors. I know my colleagues that work in other sectors are also talking about workforce. We want to be looking for what are the ways that we can alleviate those pain points. around trying to find literally the headcount, right? Or what are the ways that we can get people up to speed faster?
And so we're trying to help, help employees work smarter, more efficiently, you know, be more informed, have early warning systems, all of those things that the people who are actually, you know, in the companies doing the work. If we can create efficiencies or, uh, you know, increase productivity, get them more knowledgeable, then that just helps the companies move faster. So we, we focus a lot around what are those opportunities.
We're really proud of one of the, services that we have is a chemical operator operator training program. And a few years ago, about five years ago, we automated this and we really build it for kind of entry. Operators. And that is meant to provide a strong, stable and consistent foundation to understand what what a chemical operator needs to know. And we really say that it's built for day zero to the end of year two, right?
So in the first two years, you really need to make sure that operator is fundamentally sound and they're going to stay. uh, program does not seek to, kick out your, your own training
Right, because, yeah, people have custom programs for their
right, like if we can take care of the fund foundation and the fundamentals and make sure that again, back to the industry needs consistency, right? So if we can do consistent training, then you can put your. Own company spin on that, and that's really important to us.
Yeah. Makes sense. And then, did I hear that you're also looking to roll out something for somewhat more experienced employees?
For the experienced employees. Well, I'll I'll tell you one of the really interesting things that we're excited about. And we have a company from Mexico Viacom that's been helping us with is to actually roll it out in Spanish. So That is something that, um, we've had, we have an advisory group of, manufacturer members that give us suggestions on how to make additions and what would be, additive to it.
Uh, and so that was one of the things that they were looking for, but we've added things like chemical safety board videos in there and, process safety elements to it and, you know, really trying to build that out. Another
at the moment with the Trump administration coming in is just the effect of DOGE, the effect of the administrative changes, potentially, uh, federal employees leaving, getting skinny down, et cetera, and the effect that potentially has on, and Regulatory approvals, innovation, and more. Talk to me about that from a SOCMA perspective.
Yeah, I mean, living in Washington it has been an, an absolute crazy month. You know, I understand that. There is some, desire to find efficiencies in the federal government, and that makes perfect sense. We're about a month in now. Um, a lot of, a lot of sweeping changes have been, enacted. but we are really concerned about the ability of the federal workforce to perform the duties that we as Americans have become, Accustomed to and we take for granted because they work seamlessly.
So, you
So, you know, in thinking
So give me an example of what that could be.
I mentioned earlier that I have a passport that I need to renew, right? So I only have a few months before I need to be traveling or, you know, or I can't travel because it expires. Um, I don't know if. The State Department will have enough people to process my passport in, you know, in a normal time frame. So those are things that, you know, you're not thinking about, but all of us in this industry and listening to this podcast would be interested to, uh, to, to, to
I honestly hadn't thought about the passport processing until you mentioned it. I was like,
Yeah, I'm starting to panic. I'm gonna tomorrow go and take my forms back to, uh, to, the post office, which I hear is now getting privatized. So rumors. Yeah, yeah, yeah. At least the latest headlines on that. But coming back to how does that hit the industry?
And,
You know, it is, it is a concern, right? So on the one hand, we can feel somewhat confident that the number of new regs coming is probably pretty limited, right? Turning down that, that spigot on regulatory new, announcements. Um, but on the flip side, we know that new chemistries, new pharmaceuticals, All kinds of new entries to the market are already slowing or slower than they need to be. Innovation is getting throttled already.
So what happens if your case manager either takes a federal buyout or they are part of the DOGE workforce reduction? What happens to the pile? already don't have enough employees to keep our businesses moving. So we're really concerned about that. And somebody is going to be that person, right? Some company that is is waiting right now is going to have their case manager not be there tomorrow. And then we're gonna have to see, what the realities are inside the agency to keep things moving.
and I've certainly heard really for the past several years that it's been very slow to get new products approved to
Absolutely. Yeah,
know, the cast numbers to get whatever it is that people need that they're relying on a government service to provide.
new chemicals has been the primary focus for SOCMA. Right? This is the pipeline of innovation. And that's what we focus on primarily is new chemistries. And we know that it's been a very long process. They're supposed to give you an answer in 90 days. Right now, it takes about a year and a half. But I just talked to an EPA, um, a new person that's going back to EPA and she says prepare for two years. If you put a new chemical in today, it's likely to take two years.
So they really have a long backlog.
And the hard part of that of course is everybody's trying to, Innovate, grow, um, meet new sustainability targets, right? There's all kinds of things, and so if we can't get the products approved, it's hard to meet the targets that we've set for ourselves, or that others have set for us. Yeah. Yeah.
And, but we are hopeful. I mean, If we can tie together the aims of this new administration together with, you know, the areas of improvement, what can we do to fix things rather than to talk about what's broken? But let's put the solutions on the table and the more bite sized those solutions are, the more likely we are to get
Yeah, I love that. And I and I do think that I appreciate how you say that the aims of the the administration because it's not to decimate things. It's to make it better, more efficient, more cost effective. Because, you know, as you say, 12 to 18 months or two years to approve a new product. We know that that's wrong. So how do we fix it? Yeah,
We have a huge advantage in SOCMA because we, uh, represent, contract and toll and custom manufacturers, as well as, especially chemical producers themselves. So about 80 percent of our members do both. But in this survey that we asked about, what's the available capacity for your facilities right now, people are reporting anywhere from 10 to 20 percent seems to be the largest, but some are even over 30%. And you might say that's a negative thing that pipeline softness softness is happening.
That may be true. But we've also we also know that there are a number of companies that use the Downturn in the end of 22 and 23 to actually do all the reinvestments after they were running so hot and so hard during COVID. It was a great time to actually take a pause, put in new assets. You know, I, I know of one company that literally took an entire building down and put another building back up.
Wow. They had been waiting for an opportunity to take the their assets offline and this gave them the chance to kind of reset So we know people who have put it have put a lot of capex in for exactly this purpose because the expectation is That with all of the pressures and all of the the global dynamic shifts
that
North America is going to be a place where you need gonna want to do local production and having 30 percent capacity means that, you know, the opportunities are there.
Yeah, poised for growth is what it sounds like to me. That people are ready for that growth. Awesome. So Jennifer, this has been great. If there were things that you would tell people to, you know, keep your eye on, because these are signed posts for the year and signed posts as we go forward, what would they be?
Yeah, so I think we need to really understand the federal workforce, right? Paying attention to what happens after this initial surge of activities through executive orders, all of what Elon Musk is, uh, is, has been, effectuating right now, and some of the cabinet members are not in place yet. So then how do you transition from the White House led, initiatives into the agencies? So I think there's a bumpy part that's going to happen there.
We're going to need to wait and see what happens, and then we're going to have to do a lot of proactive, supportive messaging to the administration on how we're going to help. And we are going to help with these aims. We are in a good
Absolutely. And I, I mean, obviously with you being based in Washington D. C. and I know just the efforts that SOCMA and its team puts in terms of helping to navigate this environment, it's so critical. Yeah. Awesome. Well, thank you. Thank you for joining me today. This has been really great.
Thank you for having
Absolutely. And thanks everyone for watching and listening today. Keep watching, keep listening, keep following, and we'll talk with you again soon.