It hardly needs stating that the last two years have beenchallenging ones for European economies. The speciality andfine chemical industry have been unable to escape its effects.According to Cefic (European Chemical Industry Council), thevolume of production in the speciality chemical sectordecreased by 3.8 percent in 2008 and is expected to drop byanother 9.3 percent in 2009. The first half of 2009 appears tohave been worse than the latter part of the year (Figure1)Cefic optimistically predicts that production will grow by 5.5percent in 2010 (2). ...