Mr Calderon – a former BHP Billiton senior executive, who assumed Orica's top job in March from Ian Smith – unveiled a new operating structure on Thursday. It is designed to make the heads of Orica's four regional businesses more empowered and accountable.

Under the previous model, Orica's regional executives across its global operations had no access to their division's earnings or costs data, Mr Calderon said.

Only the chief executive could see that data.

"Previously, you had a president of a region that didn't see his costs," Mr Calderon said.

"If you don't look at your costs, the president of the region is only accountable for volumes. And volumes isn't very good because you get growth for growth's sake, and you're not getting the best return on capital and all the other metrics that are so important," he said.

"You could also make decisions that are suboptimal because you either have more volumes that aren't profitable or you let go of opportunities that if you knew about would have been very profitable."

The overhaul would affect four divisions: Australia/Indonesia, North America, Latin America and the rest of the world, covering operations in Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia.

Mr Calderon said the restructure aimed to make the business more responsive.

"If you wanted to buy something, a pencil, it . . . reported into Melbourne or Singapore, which are the two centres," he said.

"When you're at a site and you were delivering something and there was a spare parts issue, or . . . you needed to call on something, the fact that you have to go around the world makes the delay more complicated.

"We were getting feedback from customers, saying that we had a very good product, [were] very good at technology, but were not quick."

The delays have proved costly to Orica.

Mr Calderon said explosive volumes at its main Australian business had fallen by about 100,000 tonnes in the past year.

This represented about 2.6 per cent of the company's global production, which was expected to remain unchanged at 3.75 million tonnes in FY15, thanks to higher volumes in the Americas.

"We have lost customers in Australia," Mr Calderon said. "That was about being slow and not being sufficiently responsive.

"This [new operating structure] will allow regions that are much more empowered and can deploy resources quicker so they can [be] in more . . . control of their destiny. You can then drive a culture of performance."

This month, Orica shocked the market when it announced a write-down of as much as $1.65 billion and a warning on profits that one analyst described as "downgrading two years' worth of earnings in one fell swoop".

Orica shares rose 1.5 per cent on Thursday to $15.71. However, they remain well down on this year's high of $22.56 set in mid-June. The stock is down more than 17 per cent this year.