Interview with LANXESS Board Member Dr. Werner Breuers

Dr. Breuers, LANXESS is celebrating the „Year of High-Tech Plastics“ in 2011 to focus attention on that versatile material. Here you especially highlight “sustainable high-tech plastics”. What exactly are they?

Breuers:  First of all, let me say that high-tech plastic is a key material of the 21st century. It is the evolution of plastics – from a commodity to a high-tech product for challenging applications. LANXESS’ high-tech plastics enable modern life, future mobility, and sustainability. Last but not least the high-tech plastics business is a major growth driver for LANXESS and we have high-tech plastics sites in all key markets.

Concerning the sustainable aspect - there are two sides here. One is that due to its excellent weight - performance ratio LANXESS high-tech plastics are delivering an important contribution for saving weight. This leads to lower fuel consumption in the automotive industry. In the end, less consumption means: less CO2. The other side is that LANXESS has in his high-tech portfolio various grades which contain a reasonable amount of recycled material. They are branded as "ECO" grades.

Antwerp is the second largest chemical cluster in the world. You are staging a “High-Tech-Plastics-Day” here on September 5, 2011. Numerous journalists from various countries have been invited. Why did you choose this spot?

Breuers: The decision to stage our event for international journalists here have been the following: First of all, Antwerp is the home of our world scale facilities for caprolactam and glass fibres production that belong to out Semi-Crystalline business unit. We invested EUR 35 million for caprolactam expansion – which just was finished.

In addition to that we will invest EUR 15 million in the Antwerp glass fibre production and we will renew both glass furnaces in 2012 and 2013. This means that the actual annual capacity of 60,000 metric tons will be increased by 10 percent.

Glass fibres and Caprolactam are key intermediates for high-tech plastics production and lay the basis for high-quality products. Thus we have an upstream integrated value chain and Antwerp is the heart of the high-tech plastics business.

The harbour here in Antwerp, with its direct access not only to the sea but also to all main roads in the center of Europe, is of crucial importance to us. These logistic benefits, combined with the availability of a lot of the raw materials, is very positive for our business.

No doubt high-tech plastics will get more and more important in the future due to the global trends towards mobility and urbanization. Could you share your opinion on that?

Breuers: Plastics is a very attractive global market with great business potential. This is why we have focused our strategy on manufacturing products and solutions for the global megatrends: mobility, urbanization, water and agriculture. The total global demand for high-tech plastics in 2010 amounted to about EUR 7 billion. Europe and USA are still the largest markets and setting the trends worldwide – but Asia is accelerating its demand and is setting global trends.

Additional positive points are that there is a broad variety of customer industries and the expected increase of global application of high-tech plastics per car until 2020 is plus 7 percent per year.
The megatrend mobility and rising middle classes in many countries drive demand for high-tech plastics.

Can you give us an example of one of your “star-products” in the field of high-tech plastics?

Breuers: A very good example is our new brand name “HiAnt”. This is an extensive package of services offered to our customers along with our top-selling high-tech plastics Durethan and Pocan. The HiAnt brand name is derived from “high-tech” and “ant”. Ants are renowned for their well-organized teamwork, industriousness, interlinking through effective communication, and success through combined effort. Despite their delicate bodies and diminutive size, they can carry many times their bodyweight. This property in particular evokes our successful innovations in the lightweight construction of high-strength structural components in terms of materials, combinations of materials, design and processes. The association between HiAnt and “high-end” is no coincidence. We see ourselves as technology leaders and suppliers of high-end plastics solutions in a whole range of innovation areas.