Clarisse, managing director in China  [ Return towards  Our employees' stories  ]

 Implementing a production facility in China

What has your career path been at Air Liquide ?
Over the last 8 years I’ve developed my professional skills: with a scientific background, I started as Research Engineer for the Specialty gases market. Air Liquide offered me to attend evening classes in business management to be able to move into other areas. I was then offered a new challenge as strategic analyst for the new business unit Hygiene & Specialties. Two years later I volunteered to transfer to Shanghai to implement the strategy I had been working on.

Why is your position challenging ?
As Managing Director for Seppic China, my daily missions involve sales development, market analysis, finance, Human Resources management and production supervision. We work very closely with our Cosmetics, Pharmaceutical and Industrial customers, offering them specialty chemical raw material. The most challenging experience has been to start this production unit within a moving legal environment. I now supervise a staff of 24 local employees and one French production manager. With the expertise of the production manager and the support of the corporate team, it took us one year to implement all Quality-Safety-Environment standards and procedures…

What have you learned recently ?
The stable growth of our sales has been so far the most positive result! Beside, working with Chinese colleagues, partners and customers taught me a lot about business reactivity and entrepreneurship, and multicultural benefits through our discussions. Creativity and flexibility abilities are another part of the learning: you can overcome any difficult situation when you look at it from a different perspective.

Clarisse, French origin, based in China