Miguel Mantas, former CEO of allnex, joins Ali to reflect on nearly 40 years in the chemical industry — and what the next decade of transformation will require. Having led businesses across Asia, Europe, and the Americas, Miguel brings a rare, firsthand perspective shaped by global roles, major industry shifts, and complex market cycles. Now serving on multiple boards and advising chemical companies around the world, he offers a clear-eyed view of where we’ve been, and what’s ahead.
Miguel joins us to discuss:
The structural shifts that reshaped the chemical industry over the last 40 years, and the ones that matter most now
The state of the industry in Europe: what’s driving it and how the next 3–5 years may unfold
How China’s rise and private equity’s emergence rewrote global industry dynamics
Why digital transformation and AI will be the most defining change of the next decade
Where companies get digital wrong — and how leaders should prioritize investment, data, operating models, and change management
Interview Transcript
Ali Amin-Javaheri: Hello and welcome everyone. I’m your host, Ali, CEO and co-founder of Knowde. Today’s guest is Mr. Miguel Mantas. He was previously CEO of allnex, a global leader in coating resins and additives.
Miguel spent nearly 40 years in the chemical industry serving in senior leadership roles across Asia, Europe and the Americas. Before allnex, he was co-CEO of OXEA and he previously held senior roles at Celanese and several other well-known firms. Since retiring from an operating role, he has continued to stay active, serving on several boards of global chemical companies and an operating partner in private equity.
Miguel, amazing to see you. Thank you for taking the time on this nice but snowy day.
Miguel Mantas: So it is. Thank you very much, Ali. Indeed, the weather here in Germany has been a bit challenging the last couple of days, as you can see.
Ali: Before we jump into the conversation, Miguel, anything about your background that I may have missed that you want to share?
Miguel: I think that you did a great job summarizing it. 40 years in the chemical industry, a great ride. I can share with you that in 1985 when I was looking for a role, I was in Portugal at the time, and I wanted to find an industry and a company that would allow me to go and see the broader world outside of our fairly small country, and the chemical industry did all that for me over the course of these 40 years. I was blessed to be able to work in different continents, for different companies, in different fields of the chemical industry. I got to meet a lot of people from all parts of this world. And if I haven’t achieved anything, that dream I did achieve. I got to see the world really with an insider’s eye through the chemical industry. And I feel very blessed to have had this experience.
Ali: If memory serves, I remember you were in the Philippines, you were in Tokyo, obviously all over Europe. Was there a favorite place?
Miguel: Oh, many favorite places. I was lucky that I can say that there was never a place of assignment that I did not like, and that included places like Caracas, which these days is probably not anyone’s favorite spot to go, but in those days was a beautiful place that allowed me to not just get to know a fantastic country, but also the surrounding areas.
I would say that if you go with the right attitude into a new location, a new assignment, if you try to adapt to local and take up with the good things instead of the challenges, I think that you will enjoy any place on this earth, most probably. And this is my personality as well. I am somebody who likes to explore and I had great fun in all the places I’ve been.
Ali: For some reason I thought you were a chemical engineer. How did you decide coming out of school that this was the right industry beyond just the fact that you got to travel?
Miguel: I think it was two things.The first decision to go to a chemical company in those days, Hoechst was the largest chemical company at the time when I chose to join it. I think it was this possibility to go anywhere on earth when we had affiliates everywhere on the planet. And at the same time be able to choose working in different parts of the chemical industry that ranged from commodity chemicals all the way to pharmaceuticals, all the way to all kinds of polymer fibers, films. All of these things existed within the company. As always, when you choose, there’s always these things.
There was a great leader in the location I started at, and somebody who was very inspiring and mentored me right in the beginning. And I think that was the initial kick. And then, of course, the possibilities that became available started developing on their own.
Ali: That’s amazing. 40 years.
Miguel: 40 years.
Ali: 40 years.
Miguel: And going
Ali: And going. Good point. You’ve certainly been in the industry, you’ve seen a lot, you’ve witnessed the industry evolve across multiple cycles. The industry is certainly in a cycle of its own right now. What are the largest structural shifts that you’ve seen? Are there any that have really surprised you?
Miguel: It’s a great question, Ali. I think that there were, of course, over 40 years many things. I started in a time where the world was globalizing, which was a big motivator for me because I had felt an attraction for that particular part of what was around me.
Now it has changed tack to a certain degree, and we are re-localizing supply chains and value chains. There was the Shell gas revolution. There were a number of things that were very defining for the moments that they appeared. But if I had to choose, maybe three, I would say the most defining developments and cycles over the last 40 years probably were the really explosive rise of China in the last 20 years. I remember at early stage in my career when I was asked by a board member to write a presentation when I had to go dig for. I remember doing that. It was very manual in those days, dig for information. And I remember China didn’t even figure in terms of the countries that were individually listed as part of global chemical capacities.
Soviet Union was listed still, but China was not, was among other. And today China is in terms of supply, somewhere responsible for 45% of global capacities, which is absolutely unbelievable if you think about it, and will continue to play out in this direction. So I think that one is probably the biggest visible change in terms of the composition of the global chemical industry.
I think another one that was also very surprising to me, because until I was personally impacted by it when Blackstone acquired Celanese, I really was not having private equity on my radar screen. And private equity came up in the chemical industry sometime in the 2000s and has become not just a financial tourist kind of development that would go away easily, they’re now architects in the chemical industry, and I think they will continue to play a role, be it as, individual private equity partnerships or similar models that these days also exist in in terms of sovereign funds and things like that.
I think that the last one is, of course, the inflection that we have seen recently in terms of the digital and AI developments of the latter years. This was a development that had a couple of periods of, I would call, trial and error, the dot coms, et cetera. You will remember that, you were there as well. But now there is a force and the development to stay, and probably going to be the most defining one for the whole of the chemical industry.
Ali: I certainly want to talk about digital, but give me your quick 30-second point of view on what’s happening in Europe, especially as it’s related to China, energy, regulatory, labor costs, and so on.
Miguel: Very unfortunately, for all of those that are very attached to the European chemical industry, we have seen what I would call a very visible decay in the last decade. Europe was, when I started, the heart of the chemical industry in the world. At the time, we were not really discerning what would come up in terms of developments, but through the disadvantages in energy, maybe also in demographics, through the geopolitical developments of late, that coupled with those things that were always there, like a feedstock disadvantage. And now more recently the scale-up of China, which creates new competitive circumstances. And the very onerous regulatory load that we have in Europe has put Europe really in a path where it is structurally shrinking.
I think that in the last year, maybe up to two years, we’ve seen announcements of shutdowns of multiple European capacities. I believe to have read recently in one of the industry newsletters that we are up to 20% of ethylene capacity announced shutdowns. So very significant adjustments to these new developments that have affected Europe’s capabilities. And not something that one can solve very quickly.
I believe that when you look at authorities and governments, there is consciousness of the problem. But there is either a lack of sense of urgency, or a system that, through its checks and balances, is so complex that it simply does not allow a real crisis management to occur the way it’s set up right now. And we do have to worry about will there be a quick fix to all of this?
Of course, Europe still has wonderful actors that are based in this continent. Fantastic innovation capabilities. Certainly a very deep industrial network that can foster innovation. But innovation always requires time. And we are in the middle of a crisis. And I believe the environment is not so easy to find a solution under the design that it is right now under.
A lot of the actors, of course, are global companies. And you can see through their own decisions that they are prioritizing, as European companies, CapEx outside of the European continent, which I think is also very telling on how the different companies are seeing and judging the future and where they have to steward their investments into in terms of geography in order to mitigate this situation.
Ali: I’ve heard similar words from several folks. Everyone says things like dire and crisis and alarming and change is needed and, all of this. That feeling is certainly rampant. How do you see it playing out in three to five years?
Miguel: I think that we have to think in terms of scenarios. There is the optimistic scenario, which is we will realize that we cannot afford to put the European chemical industry under the same burden that it’s been trying to compete at in the recent years, and expect them to miraculously have a different result than what’s been happening.
We see the shrinking, we see consolidation continue to happen, but that consolidation is actually more through shutdowns right now, rather than through willing acquirers. And if we believe that we can remove some of these more onerous parts of regulation, more onerous parts of what’s impacting energy cost, I think that we will be doing what would be necessary in order to have a more optimistic outcome. Now this is, of course, dependent on political systems and therefore not easy to interpret in terms of probability.
I think that the next scenario would be, let’s call it the as-is scenario. And in the as-is, I think everyone is truly really trying to find solutions to help themselves. Those that can afford to hold on for longer will be in a better position than others. But you see already a lot of companies coming close to those moments where they have to take very difficult decisions.
If we see an even more negative scenario, because we also have to think about that, it could come through geopolitics, it could come through the continued, let’s call it, competitive attack coming from the far east. Then we could see even a higher degree of retrenchment occur with everything that comes with that. And that of course would include probably even political consequences in the individual countries when unemployment might start to rise or similar negative developments would become evident.
Ali: Shifting back to where we were, it sounded like you were still quite bullish on, the impacts of digital toward this industry and, as there’s carious degrees of adoption across the industry. Where do you think most companies got it wrong
Miguel: I think that there’s several aspects that are underestimated in the general sense. I think that a lot of companies believe that, since this is something that is very evident in terms of a development, that they have to somehow join in this digital or AI evolution of their businesses, but don’t really anchor those thoughts to an economic thesis.
They believe it’s, we need to buy a few tools, and that’s going to be what it takes. And I think that, of course, doesn’t really respect sufficiently the magnitude of what we are seeing play out here. I think that everything that we should do in terms of digital investment must be very clearly linked to an economic business case because that’s what really will then start driving it in a more material and safe execution kind of way.
The second problem that most companies have is very poor data quality. I think that we can probably expect a certain degree of quality in ERPs, CRMs. But when we talk about the evolution of digital and the utilization of artificial intelligence, we have to start there of course, looking at all the data that, in some cases exists even in analog forms, in laboratories, or in the minds of people that are slowly also now evolving out of the workforce. And that data quality issue, I’ve seen it in different companies by the way, actually absorbs most of the time that was supposed to be invested in digital efforts. We first had to clean out the master data and that took up to 70% of the time of the project. So that’s one thing that is really a real problem.
Of course, from those bases, then you have things like there’s not enough effort in trying to change the operating model. So we get maybe new tools, but we don’t go in and change the model enough so that we still have intuition taking people to do manual changes to whatever the models would be recommending. We have those overrides. We have in many ways also difficulty sometimes enforcing either sites or functions to adopt the new ways of work.
Change management is, of course, as always, a big topic. The resistance by all those that feel that the digital revolution or artificial intelligence will come to affect their own roles is one thing that certainly shouldn’t be underestimated. And of course, in a way, I think that we need to think having those that are capable to bring in these developments into the companies become sufficiently business literate to be able to speak the same language that the company is used to. But at the same time, the people that are now supposed to adopt new ways of working, they need to become sufficiently tech literate to be able to then speak at equal terms.
So that is one thing that I believe is absolutely essential. I mean, we all have experiences like that in similar but much simpler context. When I have tried to, in early stages of my career, to start a business somewhere in an industry that was not familiar to me, and until I found those people that I could hire, that spoke the language of that industry, it was just painful.
When we got those people, we started understanding what it was about internally and they were able to translate the ideas and products we have in a way to that industry that they were able to cope with and adopt. And at some point in time we started to become literate then it became a natural process.
But until such time, so using this metaphor that we are able to have sufficient joint literacy about both the business and technology, it’s going to be a hard sell.
Ali: Going back to your first point, which I think is just super critical. You can’t buy tech for the sake of tech. You can’t solve data problems for the sake of data problems. You’ve got to uncover the use case, like what problem are we really trying to solve? And then, how can technology help solve the problem, and then build a business case around it. As we say internally, find the use case and then build a business case. In today’s environment, I think building that business case has become more challenging.
Short-term ROI is what everyone’s looking for, especially within a calendar year. And if it’s not tied to revenue growth or cutting costs, it’s just not going to get funded. What would be your suggestion to fellow CEOs that are trying to balance this short-term environment alongside the investments that probably take longer than a calendar year to pay out?
Miguel: It’s another great question. I think that as a CEO, and especially in a difficult period where most companies find themselves at this point, you have to really work with balancing those two speeds of action. You’re not going to be successful if you ignore one or if you ignore the other.
Of course, with the intention of to think longer term being more associated with developments and investment in digitalization and artificial intelligence, you will have to have the space and time to execute those. And if you do too many of them, you probably are not being realistic in terms of the pressures people are under right now.
So very immediate ROI requires, of course, focus on how can you manage cash as efficiently as possible under the current difficulties. And I would of course differentiate if somebody is near insolvency, because that, of course is not what we’re talking about.
And the average company that has still a way ahead in terms of what it needs to build and to become really competitive in digital and artificial intelligence terms, in my opinion, should invest at least 30% of its budget into such direction. Now that can mean 30% in the sense of what you are aiming to put your money into if you don’t have those capabilities. Now, when I say 30%, it seems like a big number. It could be from an annual spend budget. Of course, depends on how much assets you have to manage.
But, don’t forget, you’ll have to invest in creating your database correctly. You’ll have to invest in getting probably a center of excellence in terms of AI and hiring the necessary talent. You’ll have to define with priority, not everything at the same time, by the way, you need to get some degree of prioritization and what you are going to be capable of doing because you’re also limiting how much you are spending into those directions. But if you don’t have a meaningful amount of your budget dedicated to that, I believe that you’re not going to do it. Because if just to do the 5% kind of token project is probably going to make you come short.
And if you think about what’s happening, I think that we are at risk of missing the train in many cases. You have, agentic AI happening. You have these capabilities, that very recently I had a demonstration that you were of course part of, which are so impressive. This is only going to accelerate.
And these agents will start being able to talk to each other, and be able to do other capabilities, to think things through and associate is going to get bigger and bigger. If we’re going to be out of that, that can be the major, the biggest risk to the businesses coming up, because there are a few companies that are majorly investing into this and in different parts of the world as well.
Ali: In order to make decisions in this industry, you’ve got to have a lot of know-how. There is so much technical information and complexity in our industry where if you’re not in it for 15, 20 years, then you don’t really understand what’s going on. And because information is inaccessible in our space, unless you’re just constantly asking questions of people, it’s not like you can go read something and just understand it.
Miguel: Exactly.
Ali: The stuff that you need to read is scattered across the entire organization and a lot of times you don’t even know where it is. And so obviously we’re very bullish on what all of the latest tech can do for very technical complex industry like ours. What emerging technology do you think will reshape the industry over the next five, 10 years?
Miguel: We’re talking about, of course, digital. I think that’s the one. And we haven’t even seen what’s gonna be, I guarantee you in five years, I’m fully convinced that we will be absolutely amazed by what we are going to be seeing. And other than that, I think that there’s a couple of things that are associated with it.
So things like AI driven formulations or material design, those will be for sure more and more, evident outside that they’re in the market you already see today. The potential that those things have to cut formulation cycles massively, or optimize recipes for cost or for carbon footprint. It may not even be cost alone.
And the companies that will have the best models, the best data, will, for obvious reasons, outperform those that are continuing just to play conventional synthetic chemistry. So I think that’s a very important one. We will see also digital have a huge impact in things like operations and that will in itself probably become a marginal cost advantage in itself simply because it’s a new way of optimizing the different leaks to the P&L in the operation context that we always try to manage in terms of keeping assets running or predictive maintenance or efficiency in raw material usage and energy usage and all of those things.
I think that we also, of course, we’ll have to continue to expect, even if this is not being emphasized in the market too much right now at this particular point in time, the fact that we will probably see circularity in many parts of the industry become a real heart constraint, both because of regulation and also because of leading company’s brand power. When companies really demand that what you are delivering has circularity built into the offering.
Those things will of course lead to developments like who is in control of the system. It may change boundaries even within the industry; you will see probably more association of those that own the recycled content with chemical players.
And of course, at some point, probably this will again become more in the forefront of topics, sustainability regains ground. I think electrification, green feed stocks and Biofeed stock will also continue to be a very relevant emerging set of technologies that we will have to consider.
Ali: Miguel, thank you for your time. Thank you for all the insights. Folks love these informal conversations with people like you that have helped shape the industry. Thank you for everything you’ve done in the past and what you continue to invest in in order to move the industry forward. Thank you, Miguel.
