Keith Hanson remembers exactly when, as he puts it, “the mouth overtook the brain”. It was October 2007, and the general manager of Evonik Degussa’s chemical plant at Seal Sands, Teesside, had been called to a meeting at the German parent company.
What, Evonik executives wanted to know, did he intend to do about the site’s impending loss for the year – which was much higher than forecast and caused partly by the loss of two new products for pharmaceutical customers?
