Yves Simons is general manager of Umicore Indium Products, a maker of thin-film products that is based at The Steel Yard in Providence.
PBN: What exactly do you make at Umicore Indium?
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SIMONS: We produce several products all based on indium, a metal most people have never heard of that is very useful. We produce alloys of indium in combination with other metals. Indium melts at a relatively low temperature, so we can produce metals that will melt at a particular temperature as per the customer’s request. For example, expensive engines have plugs in them that will melt once a certain temperature is reached in order to protect the engine from overheating and thus cracking. We also produce salts based on indium which are used in the production of alkaline batteries as corrosion inhibitors.
The product we produce by far the most of is called indium tin oxide, or ITO. It is basically a ceramic material that has some very unique properties. When used by our customers, it gets “coated” onto glass or a polymer in extremely thin layers – much thinner than a strand of hair – which are both conductive and transparent. This is exactly what is needed to make a display work. ITO is also used in the production of thin-film solar cells. These are the newer generation solar cells that can be made flexible and are much lighter and less expensive to produce than traditional silicon-based solar cells.
PBN: What are some other examples of where your products end up?
SIMONS: Our ITO is used to manufacture the displays of Apple’s iPhones. It’s used in the cockpit glass of all airplanes. It’s used to manufacture the anti-glare rear view mirrors in today’s modern cars; it is in every Rayovac alkaline battery; it’s used in the bulletproof glass in the Hummers used by our military. It goes in a lot of touch panels used by all of us more and more on a regular basis. The new Windows 7 operating system was specifically designed to allow for touch panels to become the displays of the future, because more and more we will start to interact directly with our computer monitors.
PBN: Umicore also is known for its green credentials. Could you talk a little about that?
SIMONS: Umicore for many years has believed in sustainable development – well before this term became in vogue. In other words, our products are designed to a large extent to be recyclable at the end of their useful life.
Umicore spends about 80 percent of its R&D budget – which is close to $200 million – on the development of clean technologies, which consist of three categories. The first is new energy solutions, with examples being solar cell materials, lithium-ion rechargeable batteries materials, and fuel cell materials. The second category we label “environmental solutions,” where our biggest contribution is in automotive catalyst coating materials. Umicore is one of the top three producers of catalysts.
The third area of ongoing research is called recycling solutions. Umicore actually is the world’s largest consumer of recycled electronic scrap, which gets converted into the basic metals that go into the manufacturing of electronics. More than 350,000 tons of material get broken down into 17 metals, of which seven are precious metals like gold, silver and platinum.
By the way, I just want to add here that it does pay to recycle, and I am happy to see that the city of Providence has really stepped up its recycling programs recently.
PBN: Umicore Indium is a subsidiary of Umicore N.V., a big multinational based in Belgium. How long has the company been in Providence, and how did Umicore Indium end up here?
SIMONS: Indeed, Umicore Indium Products is only a small part of the Umicore family, which has its global headquarters in Brussels. The company employs more than 15,000 people worldwide. We have been in Providence going on eight years and have more than tripled our business in that time span.
Umicore was originally a refiner of non-ferrous metals, selling metals to companies that needed them to produce their products. We changed our strategy about a decade ago to start adding more value to our metals by going up the value chain, meaning we were now focusing on, for example, converting metals into powders that are used in the manufacturing of rechargeable batteries.
We have a refinery in Belgium, one of the largest in the world, that produces indium, so we were looking to acquire a company that made products with Indium. We found this nice company called Arconium here in Providence, and we ended up buying it back in 2002.
PBN: And how did you personally get into this business?
SIMONS: That’s an interesting story – some have called it “destiny” after hearing it.
I have been with the company as its general manager almost from the beginning. Prior to that, I spent more than a dozen years in the business of manufacturing optical fibers for a large international company called Alcatel. I did a lot of capital expansion projects for Alcatel throughout the world, and once the expansions were completed I settled into a leadership role with one of its divisions, managing all the support services required to run a large business.
One of these functions was purchasing. The manager of that department, who reported to me, was actually buying materials from Umicore that are used in the production of optical fibers, so I had sat into several annual contract negotiation meetings with them. In other words, I had contacts at Umicore. When the fiber optics industry took a big hit from the dot-com bust in early 2000, I decided I needed to move on, and right at that time, I got a call from one of my contacts at Umicore telling me they had a position open as a general manager of this newly acquired company. I decided to explore the opportunity, went through an extensive interview and testing process and the rest is history.
So why did I say it has been called destiny? Well, it turns out that I am actually a third-generation Umicore, as both my father and my grandfather spent their entire careers working for Umicore! Between the three of us, we are fast approaching a combined 100 years working for Umicore.
Besides being an American citizen, I am also a Belgian citizen and it was thanks to my father, who built a manufacturing facility for Umicore back in the early 1980s in North Carolina, that I decided to come over to the United States and get my education in Raleigh at North Carolina State University. (I was there during the Jim Valvano years – some of your readers may remember him, as he became a national celebrity basketball coach winning the national championship back in 1983. Unfortunately, he passed away at a relatively young age from cancer.) •
