Ross Straughan joins Blagden

Blagden Specialty Chemicals Ltd has made a new appointment to its management team to further drive the company’s growth.

He has joined Blagden as Commercial General Manager.

Ross brings with him global commercial experience alongside in-depth knowledge of the specialities chemical industry.

His career in public and private equity owned multinationals has primarily involved chemical additives.

Within Blagden, Ross is overseeing the industrial side of the business, focused on the areas of Coatings, Plastics Additives, Functional Industrial Applications and the newly-launched Graphics Arts sector.

His responsibilities extend across customer service and supply chain activities, and he will be exploring new opportunities for supply partnerships.

"Blagden is a polished, professional operation and the teams have in-depth knowledge of their markets and products,” he said.

"The focus on the home market gives a depth and reach that many other distributors simply can’t match.

"It’s a very strong base on which to build.

"I am also interested in the trends, opportunities and building new end markets over the longer term.”

Ross started his career in technical sales with a chemicals distributor, now OMYA.

Joining Ciba Specialty Chemicals (now BASF), his career included placements in Singapore and Switzerland before returning to the UK with a role in global commercial technical marketing.

He left Ciba to join a small turnaround team in a polymer additives business and then DKSH as Business Director, Europe, for Specialty Chemicals.

Most recently Ross has been working for Element Six, part of De Beers, which is the world’s leading supplier of synthetic diamonds for cutting, grinding, drilling, mining, polishing, optics, semi-conductors and sensors.