Daniel Passlow

Group leader
Waterbourne basecoats and clearcoats
PPG Australia - Automotive

Bachelor of Science (Honours)

"My experiences have broadened my horizons and made me understand the automotive business on a global scale."

I am a Group leader in Waterborne Basecoats and clearcoats for paint company PPG Industries, and have been with the company for 7 years.

Straight out of University in November 1997, I was offered a job with the Castrol oil company, to recommission a QC lab within Victoria. After 9 months of travelling about 1.5 hours each way to work, and the fact that eventually I was not going to be using my skills that I had learned at university, I decided to move on to bigger and better things. I applied for an Orica graduate chemist role and was made an offer to start in the automotive paints part of the company.

As I was getting closer to starting my new role, Orica sold off its Industrial paints division to PPG Industries (a global company), and I became the first Australian graduate to start at PPG.

The role that I took on, involved working on new colour development in the waterborne paint for customers such as Toyota and Ford. In this time there has been many a problem solving exercise involving quite a lot of surface chemistry, which I never really studied at university.

I have been involved in new technology development introductions and

colour matching exercises for car companies. I have also had the opportunity to travel to other car making countries such as Korea, Japan and USA. My experiences have broadened my horizons and made me understand the automotive business on a global scale.

I am now in a pivotal role of Group Leader of Waterborne Basecoats, and am in charge of 3 colleagues, and have contact with production people, management and customers on a daily basis.

The beauty of this role is that I am getting a good background of technical knowledge, while I build up my teamwork and marketing skills to help further my career in the future.

The best thing I enjoyed about my studies at uni, was the final year project, where I could not only work independently, but also in a team focussed environment to get the best out of the project. Handing in that final thesis was a great relief and it was all worth it when you graduate.

This certainly has put me in good stead for the job role I'm in now.