Pervasive resin opens a world of growth

John Hirst sees the resin in everything.

The managing director of Nuplex Industries sees it in the carpet and the curtains of his Penrose office, the paint colouring the walls, the papers on his desk and in the sandwiches he had for lunch.

An otherwise reserved Hirst gets quite spirited about the finer details and admits to "boring" people with these little glimpses into his world.

Nuplex is Australasia's largest producer of resins - synthetic compounds that are the key ingredients in a whole range of products such as paints, adhesives and fibreglass.

Three years off his 40th year in the company, Australian-based Hirst, 59, is on the verge of realising his dream of seeing Nuplex become a global player in the resins industry.

Last month, it disclosed a $202 million plan to buy Netherlands-based company Coatings Resins (CR) off international pharmaceuticals and chemicals company Akzo Nobel - a move that will propel Nuplex's turnover to $1 billion.

CR has bases in Europe, the United States, Asia and South America, and specialises in resins for car paints and plastics.

After raising $56.6 million to help finance the purchase, the company won shareholder approval for the deal at a special meeting in Auckland this week.

Hirst is in his element. Takeovers are his favourite part of the job and he's steered the company through several.

The "big kicker" came in 1998 when Nuplex swallowed Australian Chemical Holdings - a company twice its size - for $107 million.

Step-by-step, it's continued to grow through small to medium-sized acquisitions in Australia and, more recently, China. However, nailing a significant international acquisition has been the aim for the past two years.

Since Hirst became managing director in 2001, he's known that "unless we went global we just wouldn't get the opportunity to be able to find a pool of skilled resource to draw from to keep going forward".

He told shareholders at the October annual meeting CR would be the "engine" driving Nuplex's growth over the next decade.

He said CR's factories were large technical centres and would open doors to much larger markets beyond Australasia.

One plant at Arnhem in the Netherlands Hirst calls the "dream factory", with an exclusive focus on innovation.

Nuplex had been held back from developing high-tech resins because it did not have such a resource.

"We intend for Nuplex to utilise these technical facilities, not only to maintain CR's strong market position but to provide our traditional resins business with much-needed research and development."

The intention is to use its spreading global network to deliver a broader range of products to larger markets.

After last month's successful placement of 11.55 million new shares at $4.90 each to institutional investors - more than half of which were Australian - Hirst is anticipating the part he loves the most, "doing the deal, getting the new people on board and bringing them into the culture of Nuplex".

Hirst will take a major role in this and he's expecting to spend a lot of time at CR headquarters in Bergen op Zoom, Holland, and in the US in the early stages of the takeover.

Nuplex employs about 1250 people and Hirst said the company placed a strong emphasis on fun.

"If you come inside Nuplex, you will find there's great team work, camaraderie and a good sense of fun throughout the organisation."

Hirst thinks there's also a lot of passion in CR, which employs 777 people.

"It's a relatively young business in the way it's structured with young managers and so on. They're not quite as outlandish as our people can be - they're a bit more conservative - but I don't think we'll have trouble changing that."

After spending 183 days travelling overseas for work last year, he's unfazed by the idea of more, although it does cut into his weekly game of social tennis or golf. He also enjoys the odd game of bridge and "swims a bit".

Since he started at Nuplex as a paint industry chemist in 1967, Hirst has yo-yoed between both sides of the Ditch in his various roles as technical services manager, general manager in Auckland and chief executive of Australian operations.

These days, he's in New Zealand at least once a month and home is an apartment in Sydney's inner west where he lives with wife Pam.

Hirst is adamant he's an All Blacks and Wallaby supporter - it's the All Blacks if the match is in Australia and the Wallabies when the game is here.

Like his loyalties, his grown-up children are also on both sides of the Tasman, his son in New Zealand and daughter in Australia.

Retirement is still a long way off. He wants to see Nuplex firmly established as a profitable international company before calling it quits.

When that day comes, it's unlikely he'll return to New Zealand to retire.

Nuplex has given him "quite a ride" and he's seen the business become more specialised and pulled away from the paint industry.

Where every local paint and printing ink company once manufactured its own resins, those operations gradually closed down and were consolidated into Nuplex.

"It's said we [the industry] can't be good at resins making and paint making at the same time."

While this has been a global trend, Hirst said it seemed to happen a little earlier in New Zealand.

"Maybe we drove it harder but what we did in New Zealand and what we're now doing in Australia is pretty much the reasons why we've seen Akzo Nobel getting out of its resins coating business," he said.

The most satisfying part of his Nuplex journey has been in working for a company that continues to present him with a challenge.

Although he finds himself struggling with boredom every two-and-a-half years, "Nuplex has provided me with significant change roughly every three".

Which means another growth leap is on the cards for 2007.

* Age: 59

* Born: Auckland

* Education: St Peters College, Auckland

* New Zealand Certificate in Science, Auckland Institute of Technology

Career

* 1967 Nuplex technical services manager.

* 1977-1985 resins business in Australia.

* 1985 general manager Nuplex resins, Auckland.

* 1995 chief executive of Australian operations.

* 2001 group managing director.