The U.S. chemicals company Cabot Corporation (Cabot) made the decision to open its regional business center in Riga taking into consideration the availability of qualified personnel with good command of foreign languages, and the well-developed IT sector in Latvia, as "Cabot" President and CEO Patrick Prevost said during the center's opening ceremony on October 14.

The new center will be Cabot's first facility in Latvia and is anticipated to be fully operational by the end of the year.

Cabot plans to hire approximately 120 people, and the team will be responsible for managing Cabot's EMEA administrative business needs, such as accounting, credit and collections, accounts payable, purchasing, customer services, transportation, data management, information technology, and human resources.

The company has appointed Heather L. Ellis as the Managing Director for Cabot Latvia. Ellis has been with Cabot for 27 years, in a wide range of business and financial leadership roles in Canada, Japan and the United States.

"We are very pleased to be coming to Riga," Ellis said. "We chose Riga as the site for our new business services center because of Latvia's highly educated and skilled labor force, its excellent information technology infrastructure, and the Latvian government's significant institutional support of foreign business investment needs. We believe we will be able to provide our customers with industry-leading service from Riga."

"People like working for Cabot, and our customers like doing business with us," said Nick Cross, President for Cabot’s EMEA region.  "We have been leaders in our industry for more than 130 years.  We have a passion for innovation, and we have a culture where our people enjoy working together to solve our customers’ challenges today, and to get them ready to grow tomorrow.  Our people take great pride in how our products are used to create advances in the transportation, infrastructure, environmental and consumer industries.  In building our new team at Riga, we are looking for talented and motivated people who share this same spirit.”

Cabot, established in 1882, is one of the leading specialty chemicals companies in the world. It has production facilities in 21 countries and employs a total of about 4,600 people.