Management team

Tom van Aken

Chief Executive Officier

Carmen Portocarero

General Counsel

Supervisory Board

Management team

Bart Welten

Chief Financial Officer

Zanna McFerson

Managing Director Renewable Chemistries

Gert-Jan Gruter

Chief Technology Officer

Steven Olivier

Managing Director Catalysis

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CAREERS

Carmen Portocarero

General Counsel

Carmen joined Avantium’s in 2012. Prior to this, she held various corporate legal positions, including for over 17 years at US telecommunications company AT&T.

Dutch native, she holds a Master of Law from the Catholic University of Nijmegen and completed various law programs at Harvard University to obtain US qualifications.

Carmen is very excited to be a part of an organization, which is defining the next generation of biobased plastics and chemicals. She believes that everyone’s contribution is important for making a greater impact and is happy for the opportunity to apply this belief on a daily basis.

Bart Welten

Chief Financial Officer

Before joining Avantium, Bart Welten served as the CFO of Centrient Pharmaceuticals (formerly the joint-venture of DSM and Sinochem) in Singapore. Before he left Centrient, he managed the sale of the company to Bain Capital. Prior to this, Bart Welten held the position of CFO of DSM Resins and DSM Anti-Infectives. He holds a law degree from Leiden University (Netherlands) and an MBA from Boston College (USA).

Zanna McFerson

Managing Director of the Renewable Chemistries

Zanna McFerson is Managing Director of the Renewable Chemistries Business Unit of Avantium.

Prior to this, Zanna held various Director and VP level positions at Cargill for 23 years.

Originally from Finland, Zanna holds a MSc in Economics from the University of Iowa.

Zanna gets energy from thinking about what needs to change in the world to make it a better future for her children and next generations. She loves the outdoors and has always had a healthy respect for nature whether it be the forest or the sea. To be able to work in an environment where we as a company and team of individuals can come together to create the future we want is incredibly satisfying.

Gert-Jan Gruter

Chief Technology Officer

Gert-Jan Gruter is Avantium’s CTO (Chief Technology Officer) since 2004. Before this, he was responsible for setting up the Chemicals Service Business (2000-2004) and was a Group Leader New Catalyst Research at DSM (1993-2000).

Dutch Native, Gert-Jan holds a PhD in Chemistry from the Vrije University of Amsterdam.

Gert-Jan believes that transitioning to a circular society is crucial in times when all elements on the periodic table are in danger of extinction. His personal mission is to help develop large-scale novel sustainable technologies that, at full commercial scale, are superior to fossil technologies by price and performance.

Steven Olivier

Managing Director Catalysis

Steven Olivier is Managing Director of the Catalysis Business Unit of Avantium.

Prior to joining Avantium, Steven was in various general management and commercial roles at AkzoNobel and Albemarle.

Dutch native, Steven holds an MSc in Chemistry from the University of Leiden.

Steven is always motivated news ways of doing things faster, better, and cheaper.

TARGET

100% of our advocacy will focus on transforming the chemical industry to become circular and fossil-free.

Sustainable Development Goals

This target requires us to call for greater action on the need for a fossil-free chemical industry. We will be advocating for changes that support the transition to circular chemicals and materials. We want to lead by example, and we are demanding from ourselves to step up to address the climate crisis. The scale of the challenge demands that we more actively engage and work through partnerships and collaborations with a broad range of stakeholders.

Future Plans and Next Steps:

Build engagement and educate the public on the impact of climate change, by using our voice and advocating for change in the chemical industry via events, media, blogs and through digital platforms.
Work with stakeholders across the plastic value chain to fundamentally change plastic material by 2030 and empower our partners to shift to renewable and circular solutions.
Working with governments and industry associations to help inform the debate and help shape climate policy through positive lobbying.

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TARGET

We will become an inclusive and diverse company that is representative of the societies and communities we operate within.

Sustainable Development Goals

As part of our diversity agenda, we believe in gender equality and will strive to achieve this at Avantium. In 2019, 29% of Avantium’s Management Team, 25% of our Leadership Teams and 33% of our Supervisory Board were women. The chemical industry is currently underrepresented by women across all levels of organisations. Avantium compares favourably against the industry average but we know that there is still a lot to do across all levels of the company to achieve gender parity and equality.

First Moves and Next Steps:

Refine Diversity and Inclusion company statement and enhance awareness.
Map diversity (gender, age, nationality) in our main talent pipelines to understand what it means to reflect society.
Define short (1-3 years), medium (up to 5 years) and long term (up to 10 years) company diversity targets.
Factor gender criteria into attracting, retention, and succession planning and other HR processes.
Report gender, age and nationality diversity and include in our company KPI reporting.
Conduct diversity and inclusion and/or unconscious bias training for Line Managers and recruiters.
Work with student workstream to encourage a better gender balance studying STEM subjects.

TARGET

By 2030 100,000 students will have been engaged by Avantium on using chemistry for a fossil-free world.

Sustainable Development Goals

Our approach to inspire the next generation of scientists focuses on three actions:

Supporting interventions that prove their effectiveness in raising interest and preventing students dropping out of STEM education.
Developing the right partnerships with STEM education providers so that we are jointly able to reach a critical mass of students. Through these partnerships we will invest in programmes that ensure that STEM education is accessible to everyone, especially those in underserved communities.
Using our scientific expertise to excite the next generation of scientists about sustainability and the beauty of chemistry.

First Moves and Next Steps:

Establish a work team with representation from each business unit.
Define education topics and training goals.
Define the roll-out (e.g. train-the-trainer) strategy to reach the targeted audience.
Develop training and education materials on sustainable and renewable chemistry that can be disseminated via social media and other platforms as well as via training programs.
Map possible partnerships and define collaboration strategies.
Deliver the training.
Track and report on the number of students reached.

TARGET

By 2030 we will be one of the 10 best companies to work for in the Netherlands.

Sustainable Development Goals

We aim to continuously improve our work environment and culture. We strive to maintain a flat organisation that empowers, recognises and celebrates the many cultures represented. We do this is by making sure we all live and breathe the Avantium values. These values act as our compass and ensure that we are a purpose driven organisation embracing sustainability, wellbeing, diversity and inclusion.

First Moves and Next Steps:

Perform a ‘Great Place to Work’ baseline assessment of workplace to be able to:

Identify ‘strengths’ and ‘weak spots’ for targeted actions.
Define a short (1-3 years), medium (up to 5 years) and long term (up to 10 years) action plan and measures to utilise strengths and improve weak spots.
Establish a ‘Great Place to Work’ team from different business units and different levels of the organisation.
Define desired employee experience and define improvement areas.
Implement improvements to enhance employee experience.
Perform a ‘Great Place to Work’ assessment again in year 5 to measure progress against the baseline.

TARGET

By 2023 all of our plants will achieve a certification for ISO45001.

Sustainable Development Goals

We already have a strong safety culture and focus heavily on Health and Safety. We will now begin to embed safety into our systems. We will do this by rolling out ISO45001 across our operations as the gold standard for organisations who are serious about improving employee safety, reducing workplace risks and creating better and safer working conditions.

Future Plans and Next Steps:

Proceeding with ISO45001 accreditation.
Preparing the systems, processes, procedures and documentation for ISO45001.
Training our people on the new enhanced standard.
Conducting a pre-audit to understand Avantium’s readiness.
Starting the formal certification process in 2022 with a view to completion in 2023.

TARGET

By 2025 Avantium will send zero non-hazardous waste to incineration and landfill.

Sustainable Development Goals

We will do this by:

Diverting waste from offices, plants and laboratories and setting standards to embed into Avantium’s general facility management and procurement practices.
Monitoring and applying alternative options for materials generating significant damage to our environment.
Educating and enabling behaviour change within our colleagues, particularly related to reuse and recycling.
Wherever possible going ‘paperless’ including electronic documentation and lab books.
Eliminating single use plastics from our own operations.
Aligning our work on zero waste with our commitments on circularity and embracing the nine R’s of Refuse, Rethink, Reduce, Reuse, Repair, Refurbish, Remanufacture, Repurpose, Recycle and Recover.

Future Plans and Next Steps:

Partnerships with our waste providers and landlords for rented sites to improve the recycling facilities at all of our operations.
Working with the Avantium Green Team, introduce programmes to promote reuse and recycling behaviours of Avantium’s employees.
Setting an aspirational interim target of 70% reduction in non-hazardous waste to incineration by 2023.
Exploring ways of reducing the amount of waste generated from Avantium’s operations.

TARGET

By 2030 Avantium will deliver Net Zero Carbon Emissions from our own operations.

Sustainable Development Goals

In order to achieve zero carbon operations, we will focus on the following areas:

Developing and implementing greenhouse gas (“GHG”) reduction and climate resiliency strategies.
Lowering our GHG footprint by increasing energy efficiency and driving investment in renewables.
Exploring ways to store away emissions that cannot be avoided, either through natural or technological offsetting schemes.

Future Plans and Next Steps:

We will:

Switch to 100% renewable electricity.
Calculate direct GHG emissions from our pilot plants and laboratory activities.
Review alternative heating systems at some of our sites including looking into the availability of biogas.
Investigate offsetting options for emissions that cannot be avoided and where alternatives are not available.
Conduct a baseline assessment of our scope 3 emissions and establish a plan for reducing these emissions in line with climate science.

TARGET

By 2030 100% of our renewable polymers and chemistries plant-based feedstock will come from sustainable sources.

Sustainable Development Goals

In order to ensure the integrity of our feedstocks, we aim to only partner with suppliers that actively engage in sustainable practices. We will strive to adopt independently certified sustainable standards of feedstock, but when these are not available or appropriate, we will create our own sustainability standards in consultation with subject matter experts and leading NGOs.

Future Plans and Next Steps:

Defining sustainability standards for our renewable polymers and chemistries feedstocks.
Working with our suppliers to ensure that our feedstocks meet our sustainability standards.
Incorporating the sustainable sourcing of plant-based materials into the license agreements for our renewable technologies.

TARGET

By 2030 Avantium will become a circular business.

Sustainable Development Goals

Avantium will tackle the circularity challenge with the following approach:

Design products with renewable materials that are responsibly and ethically produced.
Develop products that are durable and recyclable creating the highest possible value for the longest possible time while consuming the smallest amount of material possible.
Develop partnerships within the circular value chain to “close the loop”.
Develop new business models to extend the use of our technologies or products.
Develop licensing models for our renewable and sustainable technologies, scaling the production and enabling economies of scale. This will enable Avantium to generate more circular impact.

Future Plans and Next Steps

Ensuring that by 2025, all new technologies we develop will contribute positively towards the circular economy.
Investigating circular business models for each line of business.
Providing Sustainable Licences – include recommendations for optimal sustainable application of each technology.

TARGET

By 2030 Avantium’s technologies will deliver 1.5 million tonnes of CO2 savings across the chemical industry.

Sustainable Development Goals

Avantium’s technologies will deliver CO2 savings through:

The commercialisation of its YXY® plants-to-plastics technology for the production of FDCA (furandicarboxylic acid), the key building block for PEF (Polyethylene Furanoate).
The scale-up of Ray Technology™ for the production of plantMEG (mono-ethylene glycol).
The conversion of carbon dioxide (CO2) via electrochemistry to valuable ingredients and sustainable chemical building blocks.
Improving efficiency in the broader chemical and petrochemical industries using its proprietary high-throughput catalysis platform.

Future Plans and Next Steps:

Continuing to use Life Cycle Analysis for our technologies as these will confirm the reduction in environmental impact between Avantium’s renewable products and the market incumbent.
Estimating the impact of scaled up technologies per licence.
Quantifying the role our Catalysis business unit plays in supporting customers to reduce CO2 via accelerated R&D.

Trudy Schoolenberg

Trudy Schoolenberg joined the Supervisory Board of the Company in September 2020.

Dr. Trudy Schoolenberg served in various senior management positions at Shell, Wärtsilä and Akzo-Nobel in Research, Operations and Strategy. Dr. Schoolenberg currently holds Senior Independent Director roles at Spirax Sarco Engineering Plc, and Accsys Technologies Plc. Additionally, she is a Non-Eexecutive Director (Bestuurslid) of The Netherlands Petroleum Stockpiling Agency (COVA).

Dr. Schoolenberg has a Ph.D. in Technical Sciences at the Delft University of Technology (The Netherlands) and an Msc in Industrial Engineering. She certified as a Non Execitive Director at ESAA, Erasmus University Rotterdam.

Cynthia Arnold

Cynthia Arnold joined the Supervisory Board of the Company in September 2020.

She served as Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer at The Valspar Corporation, a manufacturer of paint and coatings. She was also Chief Technology Officer at Sun Chemical Corporation, the world’s largest producer of printing inks and pigments. Prior to this, she worked for nine years at General Electric Plastics, of which three years were for GE Plastics Europe in The Netherlands. She currently serves as a non-executive Director on the Boards of The Cabot Corporation, Milliken & Company and Citrine Informatics.

Dr. Cynthia Arnold holds a Ph.D. from the Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University in Blacksburg (USA), an MBA from the University of California in Berkeley (USA) and a BS in Chemical Engineering from the University of California in Berkely (USA).

Extraordinary General Meeting of Shareholders 2020

More detailed information about the extraordinary general meeting of shareholders (30 September 2020) can be found here:

CEO Invitation to EGM 2020 >

Convocation notice >

Agenda and explanatory notes EGM Avantium N.V. 30 September 2020 >

Annex I Power of attorney >

Voting results >

Introduction Cynthia Arnold >

Introduction Trudy Schoolenberg >

Questions shareholders >

Minutes EGM 2020 >

Michelle Jou

Michelle Jou joined the Supervisory Board of the Company in 2020. She has over 20 years of professional experience in the chemical industry in Asia and Europe, where she has served in a variety of positions in sales, marketing and supply chain management. In 2003, Michelle Jou joined Covestro (formerly Bayer MaterialScience) in the company’s central departments in Shanghai. She later took on the role of VP of the Polycarbonates Business Unit in China and Hong Kong. In 2012 Mrs. Jou was named Senior VP of Commercial Operations in the Asia region. In 2016, she became President of Covestro’s global Polycarbonates Segment, headquartered in Shanghai.

Mrs. Michelle B.B. Jou (1969) holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in French from Fu-Jen University (Taiwan) and an MBA from the EMLYON Business School (France). She is fluent in Mandarin, Cantonese, French and English.

Edwin Moses

Chair

Edwin Moses (chairman) joined the Supervisory Board of the Company in December 2019.

Edwin Moses is a serial entrepreneur and value creator in European life science companies. He has expertise in high value service provision to the pharmaceutical industry and in drug discovery and development. His primary focus is on high growth businesses and change management. Mr. Moses has 25 years of Board level experience in more than 10 companies, mostly as Chairman.

Edwin Moses is Chairman of the Supervisory Board , chair of the Nomination Committee, chair of the Remuneration Committee and member of the Audit Committee.

crisis test

Resources

Tom van Aken

Carmen Portocarero

Supervisory Board

Bart Welten

Zanna McFerson

Gert-Jan Gruter

Steven Olivier

Help us build a fossil free world.

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Carmen Portocarero

General Counsel

Bart Welten

Chief Financial Officer

Zanna McFerson

Managing Director of the Renewable Chemistries

Gert-Jan Gruter

Chief Technology Officer

Steven Olivier

Managing Director Catalysis

TARGET

100% of our advocacy will focus on transforming the chemical industry to become circular and fossil-free.

Future Plans and Next Steps:

READ MORE

TARGET

We will become an inclusive and diverse company that is representative of the societies and communities we operate within.

First Moves and Next Steps:

READ MORE

TARGET

By 2030 100,000 students will have been engaged by Avantium on using chemistry for a fossil-free world.

First Moves and Next Steps:

READ MORE

TARGET

By 2030 we will be one of the 10 best companies to work for in the Netherlands.

First Moves and Next Steps:

READ MORE

TARGET

By 2023 all of our plants will achieve a certification for ISO45001.

Future Plans and Next Steps:

READ MORE

TARGET

By 2025 Avantium will send zero non-hazardous waste to incineration and landfill.

Future Plans and Next Steps:

READ MORE

TARGET

By 2030 Avantium will deliver Net Zero Carbon Emissions from our own operations.

Future Plans and Next Steps:

READ MORE

TARGET

By 2030 100% of our renewable polymers and chemistries plant-based feedstock will come from sustainable sources.

Future Plans and Next Steps:

READ MORE

TARGET

By 2030 Avantium will become a circular business.

Future Plans and Next Steps

READ MORE

TARGET

By 2030 Avantium’s technologies will deliver 1.5 million tonnes of CO2 savings across the chemical industry.

Future Plans and Next Steps:

READ MORE

Trudy Schoolenberg

Cynthia Arnold

Extraordinary General Meeting of Shareholders 2020

Michelle Jou

Edwin Moses

Chair

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Help us build
a fossil free world.