Amyris, Inc. announced the appointment of Kathleen Valiasek, formerly Chief Financial Officer, to Chief Business Officer effective immediately. Valiasek will assume a dedicated role of furthering the company's strategy of collaborating with large, well-funded partners to grow the company's business. Simultaneously, she will continue to oversee the company's financing and investor relations activities.

The Supervisory Board of Lanxess AG has appointed Anno Borkowsky to the Board of Management of the specialty chemicals company. At the same time, the structure of the Specialty Additives segment will change as of 1 June 2019 and will then comprise three business units instead of two.

On 1 April 2019 Dr. Michael J. Ruf has joined KraussMaffei’s Executive Committee (EC) in the newly created position of Chief Operating Officer (COO).

With effect from 1 May 2019, Donald Chen succeeds Jorge Nogueira as CEO of synthetic rubber producer Arlanxeo. Nogueira is retiring after a career spanning nearly 40 years in the chemical and pharmaceutical industry.

Olivier Keiser has been appointed as Songwon’s first Chief Sustainability Officer. In this newly-created role, he will lead the development of the organisation’s global sustainability strategy and ensure that a sustainability framework is embedded and aligned in the company’s corporate strategy and planning. Keiser has been with Songwon since 2011.

Professor Christian Hopmann, institute director of the IKV Institute for Plastics Processing in Industry and Craft at RWTH Aachen University, has been honoured as the newest "Fellows of SPE" at Antec 2019, the largest international technology conference. He was nominated by SPE’s Injection Moulding Division (IMD) and received the prestigious award by Dr. Brian Grady, president of the Society of Plastics Engineers (SPE) on 17 March 2019 at Renaissance Center in Detroit, Michigan, USA.

As of March 2019 Rainer Wein­graber has taken over the management of Wittmann Battenfeld in Kottingbrunn. He succeeds the company’s long-standing Managing Director and CEO, Georg Tinschert, who has held his position for more than 10 years and has retired at the end of March.

Effective from 1 April 2019, Dr. Michael J. Ruf will take up the position of Chief Operating Officer (COO) of the KraussMaffei Group. The COO is a newly created role within the Executive Committee, strengthening the company’s management team. The Executive Committee currently consists of CEO Frank Stieler, CFO Harald Nippel and the heads of the four business segments Injection Molding Machinery (IMM), Extrusion Technology (EXT), Reaction Process Machinery (RPM), and Digital Service Solutions (DSS).

Karin Gunnarsson has decided to leave her position as Chief Financial Officer and Investor Relations Manager in the Hexpol Group for new challenges, including commitments in new and existing board assignments. The group announced that Gunnarsson will remain in her position during the notice period and possibly longer, until a successor is in place which is estimated to be during the fall 2019.

Woon Keat Moh has been appointed as Vice President, Asia at PolyOne effective 1 January 2019. He joined the company in 2010 and soon thereafter took over the position as sales director for the Color and Additives segment in Asia, and later added the company’s regional thermoplastic elastomer business to his responsibilities. He is based in PolyOne’s Asia Innovation Center and regional headquarters in Shanghai.