Mike, thanks for taking the time out with gasworld for its specialty gases edition. You’ve been around specialty gases for a few decades now. How has the sector changed in the past 25 years?
One of the biggest changes is that some of the integrated industrial gases companies are losing the ability to listen to the specialty gases customer. Every major company is running lean, and when you run lean you run out of time. As a result, the market price has dropped to the point that most of the specialty gas mixes are now commodities.
Have you seen a trend in various business ownership models?
The number of specialty gases suppliers has decreased due to mergers and acquisitions. As a result, some majors are too big and cannot react quickly enough. But I think we will see a resurgence of smaller independent specialty gas companies over the next decade. They will be better suited to respond to customer needs and react to market trends. This was the spirit that thrived at Spectra Gases when I started there 25 years ago.
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