Ashland took another important step in its plan for the future, furthering its competitive strategy following its eventual separation from Valvoline, revealing its new “Always Solving™” corporate identity and unveiling the organizational culture that will continue to differentiate the company as it continues its mission to become the premier specialty chemical company in the world.
“We’ve been on a thoughtful and determined journey since announcing plans to separate Valvoline and Ashland into two great standalone companies,” said Bill Wulfsohn, Ashland chairman and chief executive officer. “Today, we’re both strong, independent, industry-leading companies positioned for bright futures.”
Along with his global leadership team, Wulfsohn developed a competitive strategy which empowers each of Ashland’s chemical businesses to develop its own comprehensive strategic approach as to where to compete and how to win in their marketplace. Each will employ its own core competencies in specialized problem-solving that brings real and consistent value to customers. Together as one global team, Ashland will build a high-performance organization focused on innovation, commercial excellence, world-class operations, and disciplined capital deployment. Its foundation will continue to be built on safe, compliant and responsible operations, its winning strategy, and operating as a high-performance organization. Ashland will continue fostering growth through a pipeline of innovations and sales opportunities, and continue capturing value delivered to customers while driving its cost competitiveness.
The most public facing element of the evolution of Ashland, is its new corporate identity – Always Solving™ – which reflects the company’s positioning and people across diverse industries as broad as pharmaceuticals to automotive, personal care to paints, adhesives to biofunctionals, and more.
“Now is the time for Ashland to strongly communicate the nature of who we are and what sets our employees apart. We’re a company of passionate, tenacious solvers who thrive on developing practical, innovative and elegant solutions to complex problems in applied chemistry, always pushing the boundaries of what’s possible, and advancing the competitiveness of our customers across diverse industries,” said Carolmarie Brown, Ashland director global marketing and business communications.
The positioning illustrates how Ashland acts as a true partner to its customers, providing customized solutions that bring tremendous value to its business partners. In particular, the company is focused on innovations for growing strong market positions in segments such as pharmaceuticals, personal care and paints and coatings.
Moving forward, Ashland embodies how its people are distinguished by their ability to apply specialized chemistry with a disciplined approach that amplifies the efficacy, refines the usability, adds to the allure, ensures the integrity, and improves the profitability of their customers’ products and applications. Each of these five qualities are manifested in different ways for different industries, and together, its people around the globe are always solving, to improve customers’ products in every possible dimension. “In Ashland we bring together different backgrounds, different disciplines, different points of view, and we operate as one team with a clear and collective sense of purpose,” said Luis Fernandez-Moreno, senior vice president of Ashland and president of the Chemicals Group.
Along with its strategy and identity is the articulation and implementation of a collective Ashland Way, its corporate culture, which is “to respect, protect, and advance the people we work with, companies we serve, shareholders who invest in our future, communities we’re a part of, and the planet we share.”
The Ashland Way will drive business growth and shape an organization of which every employee – and future employees – will want to be a part. Values of safety, integrity, partnership and passion will inspire and guide behavior each day.
“We have a common understanding of how we operate, think, manage, encourage and act in order to build a stronger organization and make a better world through creative solutions based on the application of specialty ingredients and materials,” Wulfsohn said.
Ashland has a fundamental focus on safe, compliant and responsible operations and has been committed to doing business with integrity and respect for all people and the world. The company has made formal commitments to improve the environmental, health, safety and security performance for facilities, processes and products throughout the entire operating system. Forty-six Ashland sites have received Responsible Care certification, including three facilities earlier this year.