Croda International Plc has celebrated the grand opening of its Collaboration & Training Centre (CTC) and the expansion of its alkoxylation facilities in Singapore. The inauguration ceremony was officiated by the guest-of-honour, Mr Lim Kok Kiang, assistant managing director from the Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB), and Mr David Barraclough, president of Croda Asia Pacific.
Attendees included representatives from the EDB and Croda’s customers, suppliers and other key business partners. Croda has had a long presence in Singapore, with the opening of its first sales office in 1985. In 1990, Croda Singapore started manufacturing esters and in 1999 moved to Jurong Island to start up its first integrated alkoxylation plant in Asia. The expansion of the alkoxylation capacity and related infrastructure improvements on Jurong Island will be commissioned by Q2 2015. This will significantly increase Croda’s ability to meet the rising demand for its speciality ingredients from its Consumer Care and Performance Technologies customers throughout Asia. Croda’s new CTC is located at One North Singapore, Singapore’s R&D and High Technology Centre for Biomedical Sciences and other hightech industries. A*STAR and many of Croda’s customers and suppliers are located in this hub which provides a vibrant and creative environment for the company to closely collaborate with its partners to bring quicker and better innovations to the Asian markets. Croda’s new CTC includes a demonstration centre that will be used for training its regional team and its customers on the use of its ingredients in formulations. It also includes stateof- the-art product validation claims substantiation laboratories to test its products along with a skin and hair salon to assess the needs of consumers in Asia.
