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Jeremy Wallach

PartnerBoston

Uses his expertise in chemicals to help build businesses and evaluate opportunities in circularity and sustainability

Jeremy Wallach is a partner in McKinsey’s Boston office in the Chemicals Practice. He is a leader in McKinsey’s work on chemicals sustainability, including circularity and decarbonization, and helps lead the firm’s chemical insights microeconomics group. He has more than 20 years of experience advising management teams across regions on topics linked to strategy, growth, M&A, and sustainability.

Jeremy leads the firm’s work on plastic recycling in North America, including helping clients build businesses and evaluate opportunities in sustainable polymers. In particular, he has extensive experience in plastic circularity and chemicals sustainability. He has published perspectives and led speaking engagements in these areas in addition to providing client support on market demand, economics, feedstock availability, green premiums, system-level scaling opportunities, steps to reduce leakage into the environment, and carbon impact.

Jeremy also advises clients on several organizational, financial, and strategic topics, including investment diligence, corporate and business unit strategy, merger integration, and growth.

Jeremy has consulted with major firms on portfolio shape and direction, capital allocation and planning, global trends and forces, performance improvement, and investor positioning. He has leveraged his experience in business unit design and cultural integration to lead several successful day-one preparations for major mergers. He is a trusted advisor to clients on topics related to feedstocks, consumer demand, and more. He also has experience in pricing and margin capture, product and market positioning, and cost reduction and procurement.

Published work

Filling the gap: Boosting supply of recycled materials for packaging,” McKinsey & Company, September 2023

A unique moment in time: Scaling plastics circularity,” McKinsey & Company, August 2023

Petrochemicals in 2022: A return to normalcy, with uncertainty ahead,” McKinsey & Company, February 2023

Beyond the bottle: Solutions for recycling challenging plastics,” McKinsey & Company, November 2022

Addressing the challenges of plastic waste: Circularity and leakage,” McKinsey & Company, September 2022

Sustainability value in chemicals: Market tailwinds versus ESG scores,” McKinsey & Company, July 2022

Climate impact of plastics,” McKinsey & Company, July 2022

Petrochemicals 2021: Regional fortunes and growing sustainability,” McKinsey & Company, April 2022

Chemicals and capital markets: Growing sustainably,” McKinsey & Company, April 2022

Advanced recycling: Opportunities for growth,” McKinsey & Company, May 2022

True packaging sustainability: Understanding the performance trade-offs,” McKinsey & Company, July 2021

Petrochemicals 2020: A year of resilience and the road to recovery,” McKinsey & Company, May 2021

Getting value from advanced digital technology for industrial gas companies,” McKinsey & Company, February 2021

The impact of COVID-19 on the global petrochemical industry,” McKinsey & Company, October 2020

Plastics recycling: Using an economic-feasibility lens to select the next moves,” McKinsey & Company, March 2020

The M&A wave in chemicals: Bigger, faster, and more specialized,” McKinsey & Company, January 2020

Past experience

Marakon, CRA International
Principal

Education

MIT Sloan School of Management
MBA

Massachusetts Institute of Technology
MS, mechanical engineering and materials science

Princeton University
BS, mechanical engineering