Tenants have begun moving into a new $20-million, 60,000-square-foot building in Western’s research park.
Research park tenant LANXESS, a global specialty chemical company, has begun moving a research arm into the new $20-million building in the park. Here, Ralf Schenkel, head of Global Research & Development for butyl rubber, and Ron Commander, head of the Butyl Rubber Business Unit for LANXESS International (Switzerland), tour the new centre with research park executive director Joel Adams.
Among the first will be the butyl rubber global research centre of international specialty chemicals giant LANXESS, with staff from its Sarnia operations moving to gain access to Western scientists.
Senior officials toured the new facility last week in advance of the move.
“This move is extremely important for us,” says Ron Commander, head of the Butyl Rubber Business Unit for LANXESS International (Switzerland). “It’s the only R&D (research and development) centre for butyl in the world, and it’s concentrated here in London.”
LANXESS, with 2008 sales topping $10 billion and employing more than 14,000 employees in 23 countries, searched globally after deciding to relocate its research and development group.
“We could have gone anywhere in the world,” says Commander, who plans to return to Western in December, when the office move of more than 100 employees should be complete. “We did a strategic study and this place came on top.”
“We wanted to be here to be able to work with the professors. Plus, we also have access to a very large intellectual core of people, and that’s a real positive for us.”
Three world-scale rubber-manufacturing sites in Belgium, Canada and Singapore will be supported by the LANXESS site at the research park. Commander says they are already collaborating with two Western professors.
For research park executive director Joel Adams, having a company with the profile of LANXESS – with a core business of developing, manufacturing and marketing plastics, rubber, intermediates and specialty chemicals – is a fantastic opportunity.
“This is great news for the university, for the research park community, and for Canada,” says Adams.
“For us, we have small start up companies, we have the National Research Council and we have large companies like LANXESS. All of them work very entrepreneurially, depending on how large they are.”
Ralf Schenkel, head of Global Research & Development for butyl rubber for the firm Sarnia, is thrilled the building is ready after years of preparation.
“The research park provides a real innovation culture that’s very exciting for our organization,” he says. “The whole culture you’ll find here is really quite unique, and it’s a unique step for LANXESS as a whole to go to a research park.”
While also housing start-up companies, the second major tenant for the new facility will be Surface Science Western, a main campus consulting and research lab providing analytical services to more than 200 industry clients each year in sectors ranging from automotive to nanotechnology.
Surface Science Western is a leading analytical laboratory in North America and the new building will provide collaborative space for scientists and engineers as well as industry-sponsored graduate students.
