February 20 , 2008
Present:

The meeting began at 6:30 p.m. with a welcome from Jen Schauble.

Business Update: Ted Dolan gave the CAP a business update.

The plant is operating at 97% capacity utilization, which should ideally be around 85%. Currently, because the current stock was "undervalued," the site is not profitable, although the site is full through 2009. The negative operating budget was made worse by several harmless, yet costly, mistakes made over the past year. Ted has prepared a three-pronged White Paper outlining his plan for improving the site's productivity and efficiency. The three areas of focus are: stabilizing supply; reducing costs through recycling and other programs; and infusing new staff on the Lonza Riverside team. Ted has rebuilt several senior leadership positions within Lonza Riverside. Most recently, he hired a new Operations Director, who begins at Riverside in early April.

To strengthen bonds with its key client, Merck, Lonza Riverside has worked actively toward reinforcing its commitment to openness and transparency. Recently, Riverside brought two Merck employees on site at Riverside to monitor the plant's production. In addition, Ted has visited several Merck facilities and presented Riverside's plan to improve its production speed and efficiency to Merck executives.

To date, Merck, has been impressed with the business turnaround; in fact, representatives from Merck recently bought lunch for Riverside employees to reward their efforts.

Ted holds Town Hall meetings for employees approximately every six weeks to keep employees up to date and keep the lines of communication open.

Pollution Prevention Measures: Don Hoffman gave the CAP some examples of Pollution Prevention Measures that the site is doing.

In 2007, the site sent out approximately 81 mt of Palladium-containing waste, and received over 300 kg of Palladium metal back. This amounts to approximately 75% of the Palladium that the site uses in the course of a year.

Also in 2007, Riverside recovered 4.8 million pounds of one process solvent which eliminated the need to purchase that same amount of virgin material or dispose of the same amount of waste. The site also sent 1 million pounds of a different process solvent to a third party who recovered 75% of the amount as usable solvent. Riverside was paid for this valuable solvent, and again, it was less waste that the site had to dispose of. Solvent waste is also used on site for energy recovery; we saved approximately 81 million scf of natural gas in 2007 by using solvent waste for energy recovery.

The site has future plans to recover solvents from 3 additional processes, to eliminate the need to purchase virgin material and dispose of the spent solvents.

In-process solvent recycling has many challenges, and many benefits as well. Significant trial tests need to be done both in the lab and in production before the recycling can be implemented; also, FDA and customer approvals are also needed. Appropriate environmental approvals are also needed, and the site needs to have the proper equipment. Benefits include significant cost savings for the site; it reduces the strain on the nations’ reserves, and reduces the site’s pollution liability.

The meeting was adjourned at 7:35 p.m.