The company I work for, Cytec, was sold a few days ago ( deal won't be finalized till last quarter, pending regulatory approvals ) to a much larger Belgian company for 5.5 billion, who is interested in our market share of aerospace materials ( resins and composites ) and mining extraction chemicals. Our lone plant in Canada is strictly Phosphines, but a lot of our organo-phosphine derivatives are used in mining metals extraction.

The name of this Belgian company, Solvay, sounded somewhat familiar to me.

It turns out it was founded by two brothers who patented a process for making caustic soda in the 1860s. By the early 1900s they were sponsoring the famous Solvay Conferences, like the notable 1911 conference with Einstein and Planck and the quanta of light, or the 1927 conference where Einstein asserted God doesn't play dice and Bohr retorted '"stop telling God what to do".

 

If any of my new employers are reading this, I would dearly love an invite to the 2015 conference.

Solvay is also a partner of Solar Impulse.

http://info.solarimpulse.com/en/our-story/partners/#.Vb0UMfmm2J8

 

Solvay is very important and highly estimated in Belgium.

Make google search about domaine solvay

Or about parc Solvay, institut Solvay, etc.