Replique, a digital manufacturing start-up, has closed a late seed round led by digital technology investor STS Ventures and supported by ‘angel’ investors Chameleon and R3. The company claims to offer “the first fully encrypted 3D printing platform that makes spare part management and the production of small series more sustainable”.

At its latest capital markets day, distribution giant Brenntag announced ‘Strategy to Win’, its detailed strategic growth plan including new mid-term targets until 2026. It also unveiled a new brand identity. ‘Strategy to Win’ is the second phase of a planned “transformation journey”.

Mica Zuniga and Fiona O’Carroll of Xenon Arc look at how the chemicals and materials industries can tap into enhanced digital strategies to improve their customer experience

Univar Solutions, the world’s second largest chemical distributor, has announced its Streamline 2022 (S22) programme. This may lead to the sale of over $200 million in non-core assets and Univar will incur up to an incremental $50 million in charges in 2020 to implement it. The stated aims of S22 are to improve operational agility, drive faster sales growth, particularly in North America, reduce leverage to 3.0x by the end of 2021 and improve EBITDA margins to 9% by the end of 2022.

Dr Nina Kaun, product director, chemical industry solutions, at Elsevier, looks at how the Covid-19 pandemic could help to drive digitalisation

While many industries have taken advantage of technology developments in recent years, the chemicals and materials sector has been slower to digitalise. This attitude is now changing: 87% of chemicals and materials executives believe companies will ‘lose their edge’ or ‘face extinction’ unless they embrace digital transformation, including adopting more automation and applying artificial intelligence (AI) to some processes.