CINCINNATI – The ChemQuest Group Inc., a specialty chemicals business strategy firm, has added David Youland as Director. With over 35 years experience, Youland is recognized for strengths in market research, competitive intelligence, strategic planning, new product and market development, acquisition evaluation, and the development of strategic alliances and partnerships.

Most recently at Eastman Chemical Co.’s Strategy, Insights and Analytics organization (2016–2018), Youland led a global research team in the design and implementation of research and strategy projects that delivered market, customer and competitor insights to drive organic and inorganic growth. He accomplished this by partnering with Eastman businesses to provide critical insights in automotive OEM buying behavior, Chinese consumer perceptions, key account strategies, competitor intelligence, agriculture market opportunity analysis, retailer engagement and polymer market mapping.

From 2012 to 2016, Youland established and led the Research, Strategy and Competitive Intelligence function for Eastman’s Plasticizer Business Organization that identified new revenue streams and increased its front-end product portfolio. Concurrently, Eastman Chemical initiated an antidumping investigation against Korean competitors by leveraging the competitor intelligence that Youland developed.

For Eastman’s PCI Business Organization, Youland refreshed business strategy for a key specialty chemical acquisition, leading to increased margins while maximizing differentiation of “commodity” products. Earlier at Eastman, he worked to develop robust key account strategies for Eastman’s largest strategic accounts including 3M, DuPont, BASF and Henkel, which created substantial organic growth opportunities.

Of his new position as Director, Youland said, “While I was at Eastman, I worked with ChemQuest as a client and was always impressed with depth of experience of the team and the meaningful insights that they were able to provide that enabled us to make informed strategy choices as we pursued growth opportunities. Eastman’s relationship with ChemQuest goes back to 1999 with repeat engagements across multiple businesses. I look forward to leveraging my expertise in specialty chemicals organic growth and market and business intelligence to ChemQuest clients to drive their future growth.”