Jean-Paul Tognet is a chemical engineer and graduate of the École Nationale Supérieure des Ingénieurs en Arts Chimiques et Technologiques de Toulouse (ENSCT1968) and the Institut National des Sciences et Techniques Nucléaires (Institut Polytechnique de Grenoble 1969). An international lecturer, he is the author of patents in the field of phosphate and rare earth mining processes.
Like his new colleagues at Carester, Jean-Paul Tognet remained loyal to Rhône-Poulenc/Rhodia/Solvay throughout his industrial career, which began in 1969 as a mineralogy and ore processing engineer, before moving on to head up the corps in charge of coordinating Rhône-Poulenc and Rhodia’s rare earths plants: La Rochelle, Freeport (Texas), Anan Kasei (Japan), Pinjarra (Australia) and Baotou (China). He ended his career as Global Manager in charge of raw materials for rare earth production in La Rochelle (France), Baotou and Liyang (China).
He specializes in the enrichment and chemical etching of rare earth ores, and in the optimization between these two stages.