Young Industrialist of the Year Award 2011 winner

Awarded for his development of innovative homogeneous alkene di- and tetra-merisation initiator systems, which played a major contribution in developing one of the most important recent new processes in the petrochemical industry.

About the Winner

Martin Hanton graduated from Leicester University with a first class BSc in chemistry (1999).  He stayed in Leicester to do a Lubrizol-sponsored PhD with Dr Phillip Dyer examining novel phosphino-imine ligand complexes of late transition metals as catalysts in olefin oligomerisation.

In 2004 he moved to St Andrews to join Sasol Technology UK, a UK-based research subsidiary of the South African energy and chemicals group, Sasol.  Housed in private state of the art laboratories within the chemistry department at St Andrews University, STUK has a remit to conduct fundamental studies of homogeneous and heterogeneous catalysts.  

In his nine years at STUK, Martin has become CChem and worked, published and patented on a range of homogeneous catalysis processes including ester hydrogenation, alpha-olefin dimerisation and selective ethylene oligomerisation, including Sasol's new proprietary technology for the selective tetramerisation of ethylene to 1-octene, currently being commercialised with construction of the first plant at Lake Charles in the US.