On February 3, 2016, China National Chemical Corporation Ltd. (SinoChem for short hereinafter) announced its groundbreaking acquisition of Syngenta, the world's third largest seed company, for a staggering $43 billion. This marked a historic milestone in China's overseas mergers and acquisitions since the reform and opening up era. Jianxin REN, the General Manager and Party Secretary of Chemical Group then, was not new to such strategic moves. Throughout his impressive career spanning two decades in corporate management positions, REN has successfully led nine A-share companies and nine overseas enterprises with total assets exceeding tens of billions yuan. His remarkable achievements have earned him the well-deserved title of "China's King of Mergers and Acquisitions". In addition to this glory, he also holds an illustrious position as the Founder of Blue Star Company in the field of organic silicon. Let us delve into his legendary life together.
REN broke up for new development of industry
REN was born in 1958. After graduating from university in 1984, he worked as the Secretary of the Communist Youth League Committee at Lanzhou Chemical Machinery Research Institute. In the factory, REN noticed that boilers consistently generated a significant amount of scale during combustion. The accumulation of scale on furnace walls gradually increased, leading to an increase in coal consumption by workers. This resulted in an annual nationwide waste of 17.5 million tons of coal, surpassing China's annual raw coal production growth rate of only 8.5 million tons at that time. While insiders were not surprised by this issue, REN paid exceptional attention to it.
Photo 1 Jianxin REN in his youth
He came up with the idea of cleaning boiler scale. One day, REN had a conversation with someone and unexpectedly discovered that there was an undisclosed patent stored in the warehouse of the Chemical Machinery Research Institute: "Blue 5" industrial corrosion inhibitor for nitric acid. Among its applications is the removal of various stains on industrial equipment, particularly those from the chemical industry. This invention was created in 1979 and took only 5 years to develop, with a price tag of merely RMB 250. However, after its creation, it was shelved and neglected by everyone else. Deeply moved by this revelation, REN immediately borrowed RMB 10,000 from his factory and decided to establish an overseas cleaning company specializing in cleaning various industrial products. He recruited seven companions and together they officially founded "Blue Star Company" within an air raid shelter.
Photo 2 REN (Left 3 in the front)
Photo 3 BlueStar members at its inception
REN strove hard for acquisition of Xinghuo Silicone
In industries such as aviation, national defense, food, and construction, organic silicon plays an indispensable and crucial role as a raw material.
Until the end of the last century, only four countries in the world had the capability to produce organic silicon, excluding China. To overcome this challenge of not being able to produce organic silicon domestically, Jiangxi Xinghuo Chemical Co., Ltd. ambitiously built a complete set of production devices in the early 1990s. However, despite their efforts over a period of 5 years, the device failed in 28 consecutive test runs and led to a soaring debt ratio of 200%. The once thriving Xinghuo Chemical flopped.
At that time, Blue Star Company had already established itself as a leader in the cleaning industry. In 1995, Blue Star relocated its headquarters from Gansu Province to Beijing. It was during this moment that REN made an astonishing decision in that he rushed to Jiangxi Province with determination to acquire the struggling local Xinghuo Chemical.
His acquisition of Xinghuo aimed at expanding Blue Star's scale and firmly controlling chemical material production within his own hands to avoid future dependence on foreign markets.
With REN's persistent efforts, Xinghuo Chemical has finally become a subsidiary of BlueStar Co., Ltd. After the acquisition, the first thing he did was to overcome the challenges in organic silicon production. He reconnected with experts who had changed careers and also conducted extensive research abroad, bringing back a total of 7 valuable insights. Additionally, he made significant investments in hiring over 100 foreign experts. Together, they collaborated on numerous experiments until finally achieving success after five months of acquiring Xinghuo - making China the fifth country in the world to produce organic silicon on a large scale.
