A 28-year veteran of Shell Oil Co., David Durand now directs polypropylene resin consulting in the plastics practice at Houston-based Townsend Polymer. As such, he guides and participates in a business research and consulting program to provide information to the global plastics industry. Durand is involved in dozens of multiclient and proprietary studies that the firm conducts every year. While at Townsend, he has also developed considerable expertise on resin markets in China.
Before joining Townsend 1n 1996, Durand worked in various departments at Shell Oil. In his first 13 years there, he held a variety of positions of increasing responsibility in research and development, venture analysis, marketing research/planning, field sales, and corporate plans coordination. In 1980, he was assigned to Shell´s Plastics Business Center as polystyrene business manager. Following that, for 10 years he was plastics marketing research manager for the polypropylene resin business. During the 1990s, his focus shifted to Shell´s SHAC catalyst business, working both as product manager and as manager for catalyst projects and planning.
Durand is a graduate of Wheaton College, at Wheaton, Ill., and the University of Illinois, at Urbana, where he received a Ph.D. degree in organic chemistry in 1967.