Evonik’s Performance Materials segment to advance new projects

One hundred ninety managers met from September 20 to 23 to promote the further development of Evonik’s Performance Materials segment through new business ideas and projects.

“We’ve trimmed our sails and are catching the tailwinds this year. We’re measuring our progress not only in figures, but also by the promising projects that our employees are implementing,” says Caspar Gammelin, chairman of the Management Board of Performance Materials.

“We have some very promising ideas for how to approach the intelligent shaping of our chemical business. Now it’s a matter of putting them into action step by step.”

At the meeting, more than 40 novel and often unconventional approaches were advanced for the further development of business models. These include:

• Chemeasy: Selling potassium hydroxide (KOH) online: On the online platform, customers of Functional Solutions can generate a reference code at the current price, which then remains valid for 48 hours for a binding order. This represents a first step toward the digital ecosystem.
• Black & Bright: The international marketing campaign for methacrylates that showcases the creative possibilities of Plexiglas. The objective is the use of applications not only by direct customers but also by their customers—to expand business relationships.
• Expanded sales and marketing channels: Serving a variety of customer needs in the optimal way. An easily operated online-supported pilot project for Plexiglas has just started up in the UK. Performance Intermediates is now planning new distribution channels for MTBE, with the same objectives.
• New communication channels: New ways of approaching customers are being tried out and developed via Linked-In campaigns. For example, in a current series of posts under the title #WMA “We met already”, Performance Intermediates is showing where products such as 1,3-butadiene are encountered in everyday life.

The specific projects being promoted to further strengthen the positioning of Performance Materials’ businesses include the following:

• Start of a membrane electrolysis facility jointly with AkzoNobel in the fourth quarter of 2017. This will improve supply reliability for potassium hydroxide and chlorine.
• A new sodium cyanide plant has been in operation since the fall through the joint venture CyPlus Idesa in Coatzacoalcos (Mexico). This will expand the company’s local market position in the area of precious metal mining.
• At the beginning of June, representatives of Evonik and Bayer CropScience consolidated their partnership of more than 20 years with the successful startup of the recently constructed ACM plant in Mobile (Alabama, USA).
• In Weiterstadt, the world’s most advanced facility for production of stretched Plexiglas sheets for aircraft windows will soon start operation. Evonik is investing a two-digit million euro amount in this plant as well as in a new production line for PMMA films, thereby strengthening both the Weiterstadt site and the Plexiglas brand name.