On September 29, 2014, Gérard Deman, Director and Strategy Advisor of China National BlueStar (Group) Co., Ltd and CEO of Adisseo was awarded 2014 Chinese Government Friendship Prize and invited to Beijing for the awarding ceremony.
The Chinese Government Friendship Award is granted on the basis of the evaluation and selection by the State Administration of Foreign Experts Affairs, PRC. It is the national top award issued by the Chinese government to foreign experts working in China, intended to express gratitude to and recognition of foreign experts for their remarkably devoted efforts in contributing to social progress, economic, technological, education and culture undertakings as well as talent training in China. The prize is awarded once a year. This year, altogether 100 people win the award.
The outstanding entrepreneur Gérard Deman, while serving as the CEO of Adisseo, researches and implements a series of projects on business process reconstruction, concerning the production and supply chains as well as commercial operation, saving a total cost of 35 million euros. In 2006, after BlueStar acquired Adisseo, Gérard was appointed as the CEO and Senior Strategy Advisor of Adisseo. His efficient management strategy steers Adisseo ahead despite difficulties incurred by surge of raw material price attending the hike of oil price and continual appreciation of euro. As the first French chemical enterprise acquired by an enterprise of the Chinese central government, Adisseo registered great improvement in post-merger performance, with sales revenue increasing by more than twice, and the company value increasing by 75%. It represents a case of success for Chinese enterprises to go global.
Gérard, as CEO of Adisseo ever since 2010, presided over the Adisseo Production Expansion Project Phase I and Phase II in Europe. It deserves special mention that the methionine project with a production capacity of 140,000 tons per year he led in Nanjing redressed the gap of methionine production technology in China.
Meanwhile, as a member of the Board of Directors and the Strategic Committee, Gérard has made extraordinary contributions to BlueStar’s development with his rich management experience. In addition, the BlueStar overseas business funding pool project led by Gérard made headway in 2013. For one thing, this project maximizes surveillance on working capital, exercises concentrated management of the Group’s risks in global operations and ensures that use efficiency of internal cash is reasonably high; for another, it offers the same interest rate for depositing and lending the same currency, and reduces foreign exchanges and swap transactions, so as to minimize the financing cost.
Thanks to this project, BlusStar attains optimal results in capital management of its five overseas companies, which is safe, flexible, and cost-efficient. In other words, the project has made extraordinary contributions to the development of BlueStar.