Interview to Rafael Foguet, president of Expoquimia
29 December 2011
Profile
Rafael Foguet Ambrós, until does few months president of the Royal Academy of Sciences and Arts of Barcelona, is in the actuality the president of the fair Expoquimia, Mediterranean referent of the sector, and first vice-president of the Spanish Society of Industrial Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, entity that watches from his foundation, in 1960, by the expansion and progress of the Spanish chemical industry. Besides, Foguet is doctor honoris cause by the Universitat of Barcelona and has chaired the council adviser of the Foundation Fundació Bosch i Gimpera, of the Universitat of Barcelona, and the business association Farmaindustria.
In 2002, Rafael Foguet, the one who possesses a big number of patents, so much in Spain as abroad, received the Creu of Sant Jordi, prize that awards the Government of Catalonia to those people or social entities that have contributed in the defence of the identity of the Catalan community so much in the civic plane as in the cultural.
How it would situate to the chemical sector inside the group of the industry in Spain?
Has a considerable specific weight so much from the economic point of view as in innovation and investigation. The chemical sector is today the fourth industrial state, with 11% of the gross inner product of our country. Besides, it is the sector that more invests in R&D and in measures for the protection of the environingingment. Another data to take into account is that 20% of the Spanish researchers work for the chemical industry, in any one of his subsectores: pharmaceutical industry, fine chemicals, of sintésis, etcetera.
On the other hand, are many and of an important scientific value the international publications on chemicals of our universities and technology centres in magazines of first world-wide line.
And it thinks that this industry is competitive in the outside?
The chemical sector exports around 50% of his production, and of this, 60% to Europe. This wants to say that we are competitive in product and price.
How it would situate to our country regarding other countries of our surroundings?
Follows a bit the same relation that can follow the countries if we ordered them from an economic point of view: Germany, United Kingdom, France, Italy, Spain, Low Countries, Denmark and Sweden.
And inside the chemical industry, what subsectores would stand out?
The one of the petrochemical derivatives and the chemist.
Which capean better the crisis?
Definitely, those that export, although for this, have had to adjust the prices.
How it presents 2012 for the chemistry in our country?
Think that will improve the production, possibly a point, and the exports will keep growing. Anyway, it will be a year of transition, waiting for that it arrive 2013 with better results. The fact that for then the markets in Europe have recovered to a large extent is a reason of joy: if they grow, we have market to the that sell.
Expoquimia 2011
Expoquimia celebrated his sixteenth edition between the pasts 14 and 18 November in the enclosure ferial of Big Via, in Barcelona. In spite of the current situation of the industry in his group, the contest registered a considerable volume of sales and of contacts of business, as it aims the organisation. Expoquimia Has served also to give to know the last developments of the sector. “It has put to the day a lot of subjects, in the field of the processes, for example. In total there has been more than 200 novelties in technologies, in possibilities, in products and in materials in areas like the nanoquímica, the medicine or the power termosolar, between other a lot of”, sustains Foguet.
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