Listen to This Episode With Leon of Lummus Technology Here:
How does a century-old technology company stay at the forefront of industrial innovation? Leon de Bruyn, CEO of Lummus Technology, joins host Victoria Meyer to share Lummus’s transformation story and the company’s unique approach to navigating change in the chemical industry. Leon reflects on Lummus’s evolution into an independent, pure-play technology leader, the challenges and opportunities in a rapidly changing market, and why fostering a culture of fearless innovation is critical to success.
Victoria and Leon explore the balance between traditional and sustainable technologies, the practical steps chemical businesses can take toward decarbonization, and the strategic role of digitalization and AI in modernizing asset performance and project execution. With real-world examples of rapid commercialization and thoughtful insights on talent, culture, and the future of process technology, this conversation offers a fresh look at how established companies can lead and adapt in today’s chemical sector.
On this episode, Victoria and Leon explore the following topics:
- Lummus’ transformation journey
- How Lummus is balancing growth in traditional and new, sustainable solutions.
- How encouraging quick ideas, rapid testing, and smart risks speed up product development and market response.
- Striking a balance between new investments and ongoing process support during economic changes.
- How AI and digital tools are changing how Lummus designs, operates, and improves chemical facilities.
Killer Quote: “We want to play in making, breaking and remaking all of the polymers that are important… I think we also have a responsibility to then figure out how do we break those polymers after use to avoid it becomes a waste or landfill or worse and break those back into useful components that can then be circulated back into making. So make, break and remake those polymers.” – Leon de Bruyn
Additional Links:
How Lummus Technology is Applying Startup Energy to a Legacy Business with Leon de Bruyn
Watch Victoria and Leon Talk About Lummus’ Progress Here:
Lummus Technology CEO Leon de Bruyn on Culture, Innovation, and the Future of Process Technology
Welcome back to The Chemical Show, where leaders talk business. Today I am speaking with Leon de Bruyn, who is the CEO of Lummus Technologies. You may recall that Leon was a guest on The Chemical Show in 2023. We’re going to link to his prior episode here and in the show notes, and we’re really building on that conversation because, of course, Leon is a leader in transformation and Lummus is a tech company in transformation.
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They’ve recently celebrated their fifth anniversary as an independent company, and so there’s a lot to talk about here. So, Leon, welcome to The Chemical Show.
Thank you, Victoria. Very happy to be back.
I’m really happy to have you here. Let’s start with your origin story. I know folks may know a little bit about you, but let’s refresh listeners. And to our new listeners, tell us a little bit about Leon de Bruyn and how you got to be where you are today.
Well, as a chemical engineer, I started my career in 1993, and I joined Lummus as my first employer. I hope to retire from Lummus, but hopefully not too soon. So I’ve really worked my entire professional career in Lummus, but in various different locations and positions. I’ve got to know the company inside out from all those different positions. And I got to work with so many different people in the organization, got to know those people, and through them, many aspects of our business and our customers. So I like to say that after 30+ years, I’m starting to understand our business a little bit.
Just a bit. And you’ve been CEO now for five years, is that right?
On the dot, five years. Yes.
Awesome. So let’s talk a little bit about Lummus. Just give us a brief overview to Lummus Technologies and who you are today.
So Lummus, in my belief, is the only pure play technology company of this size. We are the largest process technology company for our downstream industry with a portfolio of over 160 unique commercialized technologies. And to give you an idea of how fast we move and have moved in last five years, we have commercialized many technologies. We added almost 50 new technologies just in last five years. 50 new technologies, that’s more than many companies have in their entire portfolio. So we are very innovative. Our culture is obsessed with driving improvements, new innovations and working with customers so that they have the benefit of those improvements.
So we’re a pure play process technology company, the greatest in the world.
I love that. Well, and of course we talked about this on our prior interview that we had just in terms of Lummus’ history, b ecause it’s a over 100 years old if I’m right and a big part of its time had been as part of EPC companies. And of course I think people across the chemical industry, those that are certainly close to technology and manufacturing or maybe projects, know Lummus and know Lummus Technologies as part of that entity and as kind of one of the platform technologies across the industry, chemicals and refinery. So it’s always interesting to me to see how an old company becomes new again.
So last time when you and I spoke two years ago, we talked about a 100+ year old company in startup mode. That’s still how it feels. We fortunately are an independent pure play technology company without an owner that is in a different line of business and struggles to understand our business or worse tries to put our business in a different harness than technology companies should be. So I think what helps us on our journey is every dollar we invest is into innovation, into technologies, into the people driving it and we can focus on that innovation day in, day out and that helps us as we try to attack the future. Maybe we should talk about the future a little bit, but I can say the reputation of Lummus around the world, and you mentioned it Victoria, is very strong. People know the Lummus brand from a long time ago and I think with that reputation also comes a moral obligation or duty to keep servicing our energy industry in a positive way. And I think we’re on a fast track.
The last few years have shown it and we have to look forward. What else are we going to do?
Yeah, and I think that’s great. I know we’ve talked a lot about your old technologies, your new technologies and maybe we can touch on that. But even the fact that since you’ve become independent, you guys haven’t sat idle and you’re not looking only at innovation internally, but you’ve actually acquired something like 50 new technologies over the last five years. I mean that’s a third of your portfolio.
That’s right, we don’t sit still. We’re like a startup company in constant movement mode. And this high energy Victoria kind of nurtures an environment where people bring in ideas fast and we either succeed fast or we fail fast, but we get to progress. And if we fail fast, we learn and we know what else to do, how to make things succeed. If we succeed fast, we fast pace towards commercialization of our new technology. So you talked about old technologies, I’d like to call them traditional technologies, because even in our traditional technologies there’s so much innovation possible.
I think Lummus and probably our entire industry was a little bit passive in improving and perfecting these traditional technologies. Where with energy transition now there’s so much focus on efficiency, of course under the guidance of decarbonization. But it’s all about using the same amount of resources in a better way, a more efficient way, or limit our resources to achieve the same outcomes. So less utilities consumption in ethylene, less firing or maybe allowing multiple different sources of energy from electricity to fuel gas to hydrogen to ammonia to produce ethylene. So even though ethylene is one of our cornerstones on our portfolio and a traditional technology, we are fast paced innovating in that space and of course the new technologies. So my vision, and I’ll give you tidbits, first of all we want to play in making, breaking and remaking all of the polymers that are important. Making, we have all the monomer technologies, we have the polymer technologies to make these polymers that go into consumer products and all.
But I think we also have a responsibility to then figure out how do we break those polymers after use to avoid it becoming a waste or landfill or worse and break those back into useful components that can then be circulated back into remaking. So make, break and remake those polymers. Second, water. Water is going to be more important than oil in our industry and of course in society. So clean water is vital to everything that lives on the planet. I think as a society and as our industry specifically, we have a duty to clean water. So water treatment technologies is going to be integral to process technologies. So that’s why we acquired the Zimpro portfolio from Siemens Energy two years ago and embedded it into our technology offerings. Then going more circular, biomass monetization, other waste monetization, other circular feedstocks, they have to be part of the whole spectrum of technologies that are going to service the needs around the world for all the demands around man-made products and energy carriers.
That demand is growing very fast. We cannot rely on just the traditional solutions. We have to augment it, add to that more untraditional or circular solutions so that we mitigate the impact on the environment. It’s a big task. We have to work together and I take it very seriously for Lummus.
Yeah, I have a couple of follow up questions on that. The first is around the people and the culture side of this. So I think one of the aspects of becoming really innovative is often uncomfortable. So I think just the transformation that Lummus has gone through, going from being owned by engineering companies, and we touched on this previously when we spoke, the fact that you’re tracking hours and it’s all about deliverables and yet you have to be a little bit unbounded during part of that time frame. But you also just have to have a different mindset and a different culture that really drives and embraces speed, innovation and change.
How is that playing out for Lummus?
I think you’re spot on. So for your listeners, and I think many of your listeners are trying to figure out how can we do more? How can we innovate more beyond what we already do? Whether it’s an operation, innovation can increase profitability, reduce downtime of an asset, or whether you’re in the implementation of projects, how can we innovate to have faster, less risky delivery in a shorter time frame, but also at a lower cost? For Lummus it is no different. We innovate to improve our process technologies, but not only that, also how we go about our work. As a company, at least in my opinion, you have to set a certain clarity. Number one, people are okay to try things and fail. You have to remove that fear of failure. So we have this culture of fearless innovation in Lummus and because of the high pace very quickly we can assess whether the innovation is going to work or not.
And we are fearless if it’s not so that we get to the ones that do work. And that means that anyone that brings up ideas should be encouraged to bring them instead of being reprimanded for coming up with a “dumb” question. Because that so-called “dumb question” actually might spark the best innovation you could possibly think of. Also, the fast pace creates energy, creates excitement and it causes people to think outside of the box. So it’s a self fulfilling prophecy that is very positive where people are energized, they are fearless to speak up, share their ideas or try things and quickly figure out whether things work. If they work, we fast track them to commercialization.
To give you two examples, we brought into our portfolio high density polyethylene in partnership with our partner from Thailand, SCG. And it was a mature technology, but together we perfected it. With that perfection, we looked for a first user of our improved technology. Within a year of our collaboration, we landed the first licensee in that space. And that’s going to be announced soon. But getting a commercialization within one year is a world record. Second is, we have of course acquired SAP technology. Super absorbent polymer. Both are in line with this make, break and remake all the polymers. So we landed our first licensee within one and a half years after acquiring the technology.
That was not necessarily developed in partnership. So a bit more weight carried by Lummus, but again, fast commercialization. And so I’m very proud of what our organization turns out, but I’m even prouder to see that come to fruition in actual plants being built.
Yeah, absolutely. That’s always the hard part. It’s easy to come up with the idea, the actual implementation and commercial acceptance can be trickier. I think what strikes me is we’re in a period of time where there’s just a lot of uncertainty. When I talk to leaders across the chemical industry, they talk about how we’ve certainly seen, and you see the news articles in the headlines as well as I do, the number of shutdowns we’re seeing, particularly in Europe, there seems to be a throttling back in other parts of the world.
And you guys are a company that thrives on and is predicated really on new investments or maybe improvements to those investments. How do you handle this uncertainty? Because it’s both with your existing technologies, with your new technologies. We’re in a period of uncertainty, and it strikes me that you guys are maybe sometimes with the dog that’s wagging the tail, you’re sometimes there at the tail potentially getting whipped around. And how do you keep your team on track, on focus, recognizing that this is perhaps cyclical, perhaps not? How do you tackle that?
I’m sad to see those closures. There were some announcements, I don’t want to name them, but there were some announcements in Europe of plants that I designed when I was a young engineer as part of a big team. And so those plants are like 20 years old and they get shut down, it’s heartbreaking, right?
It’s personal to you. When you’ve been involved in it, it is heartbreaking.
These plans are like a baby, you’ve worked with a whole team to create them. And 20 years in, they’re nowhere near their end of life. So it’s almost a waste of capital. So you’re right. This is not a singular incident, this is unfortunately symptomatic to our industry. There’s clearly overcapacity, especially in petrochemicals or you can say the matching demand is not there where it would be, maybe because of some of the externalities that we faced over the last five years, who knows.
But economics will drive those decisions, right? Lumbers is slightly different than you think. So about a third of our revenues are from new capacity investments. So it’s still sizable. But 2/3 of our revenues are from existing infrastructure, existing assets that were licensed many years ago. So our business model is about competing for technology licenses with a customer that is planning for an investment. As we are successful, we then start a long term relationship with the customer that initially is in the CapEx phase. And this is the 1/3 of our revenues where we license the technology, we create a blueprint of their investment and we help them making the most out of their investment in the shortest time possible. It then starts a very long, durable, next phase of the operating cycle of our customers, during which Lummus continues to help the customer through digital solutions, lifecycle services, other tech services and consulting, of course, proprietary catalyst and other formulations and proprietary equipment and replacement of aged equipment.
So about 2/3 of our business is from the existing asset base and that’s a growing base. Yes, there are shutdowns unfortunately, but still net postive, it’s a growing base. Lummus has a role to play to support our customers before they start on the plant, when they implement their capital expenditures, and certainly also after start operating it to help them on the journey. And these closures are sad because I think many of these assets can be repurposed, changed, enhanced in terms of profitability and we can play a role with our customers to help them enhance the profitability of the existing assets, which is usually a very short return on investment decision because the CapEx is already there. It’s a matter of changing things. Maybe different catalysts, maybe different focus on different finished products, different feedstocks, or all of the above evolving. That repurposing is tremendous opportunity, and again, it’s about 2/3 of our revenues.
That’s really helpful, so I guess it was a good question. How does this tie in when you think about, traditional versus sustainable technologies? The similar thing I hear when I talk to companies across the chemical industry, for instance, one of the challenges that we’re seeing is kind of this question of who’s paying for sustainability. So we all recognize that it’s critical, being at the front end of the funnel, so to speak. It’s important for Lummus and companies like Lummus to continue to innovate and identify these more sustainable solutions.
How do you see this playing forward? Do you see the demand for sustainable technologies continuing to be robust? Is this part of the cyclicality that we’re just working our way through, or is it really an evolutionary process?
So we have to acknowledge, our industry is here to stay. Modern quality of life is impossible without our industry. So let’s acknowledge that. And then the second acknowledgment is the massive size of energy demand through energy carriers, transportation and other or through the materials that we make that make modern life possible. Those materials and those energy carriers have to be made from something that contains carbon.
Yeah.
And that carbon has to come from somewhere. And historically, traditionally it came from natural resources. So oil, gas, coal, other resources. But the growing demand and the growth that we have enjoyed in the last few decades have caused an impact on climate or other environmental impact issues associated with this. We have to acknowledge that too. So the sheer size, the fact that our industry is not going to go away, and the fact that we have to do something to avoid larger impact combined, we all have a responsibility to play, certainly for Lummus as a technology company. So when I think about Lummus’ role and what you just painted on this whole spectrum of energy in a traditional way to energy transformation or circularity, we have to think about all of it. When we look at the total asset base, if we can improve the total asset base by 2%, just to make it up, 2% more efficiency.
Asset base has been built up over 50 years. So if we improve it by 2%, we have 100% equivalent of total new investment that we could decarbonize so that the gains we can make from the traditional processing is tremendous in total volume. We have to do it at the same time we are growing to serve the needs for energy and materials. So the new investments have to be more efficient than the existing and they have to have enough sustainability and improvements to minimize impact on the environment, whether we go to 100% circularity or not. To me, it’s not a relevant conversation. The conversation has to be what can we do constantly, across the whole spectrum? We can go to an existing petrochemical facility, look at the ethylene plant and say, what can we do on the feedstock, on the heater and its efficiency? Maybe air preheat? What can we do on the product workup sections to make it more efficient and get more of the desired products? And a new ethylene complex, maybe we say what can we do to do hydrogen firing or a net zero cracker with electrification? At the end of the day, all of these investments have to make sense for people putting money into it. Nobody’s going to invest a billion dollars if there’s no return on investment.
We can love the planet as much as we want, but we have to create the environment through best technology and maybe incentives or market to make sure that those investments will find their way into what we are going to operate. So for Lummus, we look at the whole spectrum, we have to.
Yeah, so that’s interesting and that’s helpful too, because you’re looking at it really not just as net new technologies with something that hasn’t been done before, but also the sustainable improvement across all these existing assets that are already installed, existing technologies that continue to evolve and get better. At the end of the day, some of this sustainability is also, I often tell people that the chemical industry and refining and chemicals are inherently sustainable, partly because every time there was a waste stream, instead of it getting sent off to the flare, sent to waste, we wanted to figure out how do we use it because there’s still something useful in it. Let’s find a way to use it, improve it and continue going forward. So a lot of sustainability is actually around efficiencies, cost improvements, et cetera.
Even in waste streams, there’s value. That’s why I believe Lummus has a role to play in waste monetization. Whatever the waste stream is, and you said it right, our industry is focused on efficiency and retaining or enhancing value through upcycling of high value streams, side streams, side products. That’s what our industry has done. Now we have to participate in the narrative and in the conversation around where we’re going as an industry. If we only let this conversation be held by people that think the sustainability switch has to be flipped today and everything has to be only green technology, it’s not going to be practical. These technologies take time to mature, to prove themselves, to prove the economics and the viability of the technology.
At the same time, if you switch off our current industry, the quality of life as we know it will disappear overnight. And I don’t think anyone realizes that impact. So we have to be part of the conversation and at the same time, we have to roll up our sleeves and look at ways to improve what you already have. The existing asset base, repurpose different feedstocks, co-feeding of circular materials, etc.
Yeah, makes sense. So this is probably a good time to segue and let’s talk about digital because I think certainly digital innovation is where a lot of the opportunity space is. It’s certainly where we are today. I just think about how much the world has changed even in the past two years, when two years ago I feel like people didn’t know how to spell AI. Yet here we are today and it’s just part of everyday usage. What does digital look like for Lummus? What role does it play in your business?
Well, there’s a few different aspects. You and I were at this massive event in California earlier this year where we combined our industry technology companies. Also Google and the likes were there. Scientists were there, of course, from universities as well. And I think there’s a common realization that AI is going to find its way into our industry. There’s no doubt, AI is going to find its way into anything. Maybe the next talk we have, we will have our holograms talking to each other and we will be enjoying a cocktail while they do our work.
I’m not sure if I want that, but okay.
I’m with you. But I think we have to assume it as a fact that AI is going to find its way into our industry. It’s up to us to define how. So what Lummus does is, number one, already for 3-4 years through our Lummus Digital company, we have been helping our customers to combine digital solutions with process technology. So the first principles that you and I grew up with to design the plants combined with the digital opportunities and find ways to enhance value, less downtime for plants, better usage of the feedstocks, better product destinations and so on. So that is an efficiency gain that we see from our customers where we have implemented digital. So that is going to keep growing across our portfolio. The second, and this is the most promising in my opinion, is all these plants in operation over many years generate an enormous amount of data.
And that data has not really been used so far to be a first input in how should we design the next complex. It has been used to optimize, of course, with operators and on site for the existing plants, but they have not been used to redesign. I think using AI and the progress of AI, it enables us to look at all the data and sort through it and make sure that we can design the next plants more efficiently, more reliably and more sustainably. So I think that is going to happen and Lumberjack is on a mission to create such a platform with some big partners. This will change how our industry is going to look at, how should we be designing? Because until now it’s been on empirical based formulas, engineering formulas and in a weird way using AI it’s also based on empirical but a much shorter recycle loop as opposed to 100 years. It’s a matter of days or real time. So that’s going to really change our industry. And then the third last one is how Lummus works in especially the CapEx cycles, you know that building a refinery or petrochemical side chemicals, it takes years, at least three more realistically five to seven years.
So for those investors, it takes anywhere between three to seven or more years to see the first return on their investment. So how can we shorten that cycle? How can we shorten this beyond what we have been doing? And I would argue that we are already optimized without AI. So how can we use AI to optimize and shrink that cycle? We believe it should be cut in half somehow. So how do we do this? Well, we will find out and this is going to be the next couple of years how we are going to generate solutions benefiting from AI.
Yeah, one of the things that I think is an interesting challenge and you talk about kind of the data that’s used to improve the processes and how do we take that data and use it to improve how we build technologies and advance. That information has often been kept, I’m going to say held hostage and that’s not necessarily the right term, but it’s been held tightly. It’s been viewed that innovation, that information, the data is either proprietary or me having a little bit different information than what you have allows me to be a more effective competitor. AI’s kind of forcing it to happen. We’re seeing it happen certainly on a personal level when you think about something like ChatGPT and the large language models that are so effective. Why? Because so many people are asking the questions and giving it input.
So I think there’s going to have to be a different way of working across the industry that maybe democratizes some of the data so that we can collectively be more effective.
I agree it is somewhat scary if you’re operating a complex and you don’t want your data to be out there with a direct competitor because it gives them a competitive advantage. So I understand that. But on the other hand, I think that data is going to enable a lot of things that these operators can do. With that in mind, we closed an acquisition where we acquired a digital company, NAPCON. We closed it on the 1st of June this year. We saw the strength of that digital technology in helping operators with real time optimization, and training of the operators.
Right now, partly because of digitalization, less and less operators are very experienced to know how to operate a plant in abnormal situations. So you can do “what if” scenarios with a computer behind you instead of a $1 billion plant behind you. And so this NAPCON technology was acquired and our vision is we can scale that across our 162 technologies such that we can provide the same solutions that NAPCON had been providing to virtually every customer we have and use the data that those customers generate to their own benefit. Then I think at some point they also want to know, well, what else is out there in terms of data. Similar to the Solomon assessment, every company wants to know how they rank, but they’re also careful how to share information.
Yeah, absolutely. Benchmarking has been so critical, but it’s hard to do and yet we all want it.
Exactly. So I think AI, like you said, democratizes data to some extent. It will drive it to some commonplace. It won’t be in either of the extremes.
Yeah, and so this NAPCON acquisition is going to help you in delivering some of that digital solution to your customers.
100%. Both the new processes we will design, but also the existing customer base of 2.5 thousand or so units out there that we had licensed in the past.
Wow, that’s a lot of units. So let’s talk about what’s next for Lummus. You guys are celebrating your five year anniversary of being an independently owned pure play technology company, focusing in and refining in chemicals. So that’s been a big journey. What do you see happening in the next two to five years for Lummus?
Yeah, so we will celebrate this. One of my mantras is we have to celebrate more because we are in such a high pace mode that we sometimes forget to pause and enjoy and celebrate what we have accomplished because we are accomplishing a lot. So July 1st is our 50th anniversary. First of all, I’m very proud to say that we located the very first patents that Walter E. Lummus filed 110 years ago.
That’s impressive.
Yeah, so the actual physical patents that he filed. We’re very proud of that and we are celebrating that. Second, we take time across our globe to realize what we have accomplished in the last few years. We now have close to 20 offices around the globe, double from where we started. So it’s a fast pace and it’s a reflection of our growth, of course.
But it’s also good to realize, okay, anchor on where we are now, because we’re going to continue this growth and we want to realize what has made us so successful, and is that going to make us successful as we go forward. There’s some things that I think would be answered with yes, but some we may have to change. First of all, the passion and innovation drive is obviously a key ingredient to our future. And so the people that make our success are the 1100 employees around the globe and their passion and their new ideas and innovation. Second, the R&D focus and the commercialization focus. Like you said, you don’t just want to come up with the ideas, you want to see that implement. So that is a second ingredient that I think will always be there.
Then the third is focus on people, talent. Our industry has gone through a lot of change, and we have to find and retain the talent that’s going to keep our momentum. And so there’s been a lot of focus on talent in the last five years and there will continue to be. And then some things that are changing. We talked about AI and digitalization. I still struggle to pronounce digitalization, so I’m thankful for AI. It’s easy to pronounce.
It’s a whole lot easier.
But clearly, the next two or three years, there’s going to be tremendous changes in our industry and in Lummus, how AI is capitalized. We talked about it, so I don’t want to dwell on it, but I don’t think we’ve seen anything beyond the tip of the iceberg yet. Time will tell how this will contribute and what are some of the downsides of AI. That also leads to a second change. How we have been doing our work, how we’ve designed new plants is going to change.
When we would design a distillation tower, we would take 1-2 weeks to do all the iterations and the optimization and, we have an expert weigh in, customer weigh in, so that we know that that distillation tower is optimized for its use and for its cost and therefore return on that investment. I think with AI, it could be within a day, maybe within an hour, maybe within a few minutes. That permits us to then say, okay, is this really the best? So instead of taking the outcome after what we used to do in one or two weeks for granted, because nobody wants to delay a project by another month or so, now we will have the luxury to say, okay, we worked on this for one hour, here’s the outcome, let’s think about this. Should we do it differently and let’s run it one more time or two more times so that actually leads to better capital efficiency. In my opinion, our design cycles are going to be shortened where a lot of the routine work will be done by AI agents.
That leads to a realization that the checkpoints that we have in project, the hazards, all the things, we now have to rethink this with AI in mind, because as much as AI can contribute, it cannot permit to have hallucinations or other unintended routes that AI takes us to influence the design in a bad way, because our industry has to be a safe industry. So I think also how we think about the execution of projects with customers, with partners, it will fundamentally change. I don’t know yet how, but I can see there’s this need to rethink this.
I’ve spent a chunk of my time during my corporate life at Shell in particular, doing process improvement and really looking at business processes, both as digital came in and through other things. And it’s this whole way of working and what we expect from people, what we expect from our processes. Because if you can get an answer in one day, great. On this distillation tower, for instance, is the rest of the process ready for that answer so that you can keep it moving? So figuring out what the new way of designing a plan of working together with partners, et cetera, is going to be an opportunity for all of us.
But it’s exciting. This is why engineers study engineering, to make things better, to improve. So I think it’s exciting that we are looking at this task and I’m sure we will solve problems, and I’m also sure it won’t be painless, but it will be rewarding.
Yeah, and that’s a great way to end. So, Leon, thank you so much. I’ve really enjoyed our conversation and providing an update of Lummus to our listeners of The Chemical Show. And congratulations on five years. So thanks for joining me.
Thank you, Victoria. Always a pleasure to be with you.
Absolutely. And thank you everyone for joining us today. Keep listening, keep following, keep sharing, and we will talk with you again soon.
About Leon de Bruyn:
Leon de Bruyn is the President and CEO of Lummus, where he is responsible for all aspects of Lummus’ strategic direction and global performance. During his 30-year career with Lummus, he has worked in eight countries establishing executive experience in the downstream refining and petrochemicals industry, through technology development, licensing, catalyst supply and engineering activities.
Prior to his current role, he led the transformation of the Lummus business from a subsidiary of McDermott to a standalone company owned by The Chatterjee Group and Rhône Capital.
He holds an MBA from Duke University, and a Masters in chemical engineering from Eindhoven University in The Netherlands.
In 2021, he was named Executive of the Year by Hydrocarbon Processing, a leading downstream industry publication.