Distrupol and Lucite International redefine traditional distributor role to drive innovation and customer benefits

Distrupol, a member company of Univar and a leading European polymer distributor, technical service provider and application development partner, has announced that its 15 year distribution relationship with Lucite International has been elevated to an ‘open book’ working partnership to provide a more complete integrated service both to benefit Lucite customers and the wider polymer-user market.

Believed to be a unique co-operation between independent supplier and distribution companies, the open book approach adopted by Distrupol and Lucite involves all aspects of their commercial relationship. Lucite is the leading global supplier of methyl methacrylate (MMA), and a leader in the supply of acrylic polymers (PMMA).

Transparency and integration of sales activity are the key features of this new strategy, which is particularly geared to expanding the use of Lucite’s Diakon™ acrylic resins in the injection moulding market. This will include regular exchange briefings on each other’s businesses, the joint appraisal of application opportunities and materials development, combined-team visits to major customers and joint training and skills advancement programmes.

“This is a significant and exciting step both for Distrupol and Lucite,” explains Gerry Moore, Managing Director of Distrupol in the UK. “It represents a much higher level of co-operative effort between our two companies which in itself brings many mutual advantages. However, of greatest importance is that sharing our complementary expertise will enable us to broaden and deepen the service-value we deliver to customers.

“The extrusion market has been Lucite International’s primary focus. Now that more emphasis is to be place on reaching into the injection moulding sector to grow its position, our application developers and technical service personnel will work closely with the Lucite engineering team to understand its latest processing and materials developments and to assist in translating them into injection moulding solutions for the market.”

Marketing through distribution is an essential element of Lucite’s growth strategy and currently accounts for around 74% of its resin and sheet product sales. In Europe this has been aided for the past 15 years by Distrupol, which has an exclusive distribution agreement with the company for the UK, Ireland and the Nordic and Benelux regions.

Commenting on the new relationship between the two companies, Alan Rodger, Lucite International Business Director, says: “Because our aim is to continuously push out the limits of what we do for our customers, entering into a closer, open relationship with our distributor is a logical step. Distrupol has the market knowledge that can help to drive our developments forward and the technical expertise to give all necessary ongoing support to our customers in the field.

“To maximize these advantages we each need to have insight and input into the others organisation in respect of product developments and marketing vision. Given our past relationship and the new ground we are breaking in working together, I am very confident that we shall achieve our joint objectives and benefit our customers.”

This confidence is echoed by Gerry Moore who adds that while all Lucite’s material solutions are based on PMMA, they are a valuable complement to the wider range of high performance engineering polymers in Distrupol’s product basket, they extend material choice and make a major contribution to the application solutions available to customers.