SOCMA Commercial Services – Year-round tools to help grow your business
By Paul Hirsh, SVP Industry Relations
The Specialty & Custom Chemicals Show brought to life the programs and services SOCMA delivers year-round, enabling you to find new business partners, showcase capabilities, and dive into top-of-mind issues with analysis and data to strengthen your company. With guidance from the ChemSectors Steering Committee, SOCMA’s Commercial Services team continues to deliver relevant tools and critical intel to help the specialty and fine chemicals industry grow and validate your business decisions.
Manufacturing and Service Solutions Platform
Due to its success in enabling companies to connect with a broader base of potential partners, the Manufacturing Solutions Platform recently expanded to feature industry service providers. This 24/7 searchable database now showcases all of our member company capabilities, chemistries, equipment and services up-and-down the chemicals value chain to support all aspects of your business.
Lead Sheets
Accelerating growth through commercial matchmaking for the specialty chemical industry is SOCMA’s Lead Sheet Service. Entering its fourth year, more than 110 Lead Sheets have been developed, facilitating 300+ B2B connections. Leveraging the expertise of SOCMA’s technical staff, Lead Sheets connect project requestors (customers) to SOCMA members with the necessary capabilities and services to ensure your project makes it across the finish line. As you can see by the stats below, this program is helping grow business! We are excited to see where the next four years take us and are ready to work with you on your next project.
Manufacturing Solutions Days
Launched in 2021, Manufacturing Solutions Days (MSD) is a quarterly virtual event, hosting specialty chemical manufacturers and solution providers who present their capabilities and expertise. These 15-minute individual company showcases allow you to walk through your unique offerings, company successes and answer questions from attendees. Each MSD also allows your company to reach and engage a wide audience through SOCMA’s multi-channel marketing approach. MSDs are recorded and posted on SOCMA’s website for future viewing by further potential project partners.
Manufacturing Solutions Day testimonials
Here are a few examples of what past presenters shared about their Manufacturing Solutions Day experience:
- Colonial Chemical, Inc.: “Colonial offers high quality cosmetic and industrial surfactants, performance additives, and other key building-block ingredients for use in a wide variety of applications. We had a successful MSD in 2021, sharing our company story and capabilities, and were able to hear about the chemical manufacturing needs of the audience.”
– David Anderson, Sr., Chairman
- Colour Synthesis Solutions: “As companies continue to battle supply chain issues, product shortages, and consistent quality issues, Colour Synthesis Solutions (CSS) was pleased to be able to share our capabilities that help clients take back control of their raw materials, develop alternate routes of synthesis, resurrect old dyes, uncover new suppliers and increase constrained resources by becoming an extension of their R&D, new product development, or analytical departments.”
– Kelly Schaefer, Sales & Marketing Director
- Nation Ford Chemical: “As a custom chemical manufacturer, it’s important to have opportunities to present our wide range of services to a broader base of potential customers through different channels, like SOCMA’s Manufacturing Solutions Day. We were able to share about our equipment and chemical expertise, as well as the ancillary services required to manufacture the product and customization options to a wider audience at once.”
– Brooke DiDomenico, Technical Manager
The first MSD of 2022 entitled “SOCMA Members Represent All Services and Products Along the Specialties Value Chain” will feature firms in the equipment space and will walk you through their products and services and the latest manufacturing trends. Meet equipment providers who can help you make informed decisions as you evaluate your manufacturing needs. For more information and to register, reach out to our Commercial Team at phirsh@socma.org.
Industry intelligence to validate business decisions
In addition to providing opportunities to showcase and grow your business, SOCMA’s Commercial Team provides industry intelligence to help you validate your business decisions. With increased demand and persisting supply chain challenges, the seamless but flexible management of project calendars in order to best serve customers are top of mind for the industry. SOCMA is diving into these topics and more through our ChemTrends newsletters and industry pulse polls, including matters like Logistics Challenges, Managing Your Project Calendar, and Reshoring: Driving Domestic Manufacturing.
Through SOCMA’s regular pulse polls, we deliver critical, timely intel SOCMA’s members and our expansive industry network identify as trends, such as increased project lead time with a heightened focus on open communication and collaboration between current or potential project partners.
With supply chain and logistics challenges still being felt across the specialty and fine chemical value chain, companies are planning for the future and considering creative solutions – as the below pulse poll data shows.
The recent virtual executive roundtable, featuring a panel of SOCMA Board members, further explored this topic, with industry leaders sharing their insight and experience on areas such as:
- Assessing internal nimbleness and collaborating with customers to take advantage of unplanned opportunities – helping them to optimize any calendar “openings.”
- Planning based on short/medium-range customer forecasting and making “smart” decisions when pivoting between projects, as timing and other requirements change.
- Managing peaks and valleys of business impacts on your executable plan.
- Overcoming workforce challenges.
- Capital investments – syncing up with customers to determine the short/mid/long term CapEx opportunities.
- Maintaining a critical eye on process safety throughout the plant.
Analyses of Lead Sheet requests and member capabilities contribute to SOCMA’s industry intelligence and data repository. If you have a project in mind and would like to connect with our membership via the Lead Sheet Service, or would like a breakdown of our analysis that would be helpful in your business planning, please reach out to Paul Hirsh at chemsectors@socma.org
Side Bar – Graphic of the Lead Sheet One-Pager:
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