Derek Atkinson

Derek Atkinson is responsible for Total Corbion PLA's business in the Americas and has been located in the USA since July 2015. Previously, he was Business Development Director PLA Asia for Corbion located in Singapore. In addition to his main responsibilities for commercializing Corbion’s  PLA technology in Asia, he was also strongly involved in the sourcing and conversion of second generation biomass as feedstocks for sustainable PLA production.

Prior to that, Derek was Business Development Director at Oxford University spinout Velocys plc, a catalyst technology and microchannel reactor development company in the UK and USA. During his time at Velocys, the company grew from 7 people to over 130. The focus of Velocys was in gasification and Fischer-Tropsch conversion for biomass to liquids and gas to liquids – specifically flare gas conversion and stranded gas monetisation. He was a member of the UK Government Thematic Working Group on thermochemical conversion of biomass.

Before working for Oxford, Derek held numerous global sales and marketing positions during his 17 years at Grace Davison, mostly focused on the polymer catalyst area, and was located in Germany. He has a degree in Chemistry and Polymer Science Technology from Loughborough University in the UK. Until he left Europe, he was an external examiner for the School of Chemistry at the University of Cardiff.