Chemistry and sport have more in common than is obvious at first glance. Olympic disciplines rely on high performance equipment. Appropriate materials and components are provided by the chemical industry. The global expansion of the sports and leisure industry, a market now worth billions of dollars, has also been highly lucrative for LANXESS. Moreover, the market is continuing to grow in importance for this specialty chemicals group. Whether it’s rubbers for soles, plastics for skis or high-tech materials for bicycle tires, LANXESS offers a broad range of products in these sectors.

Take golf, for example – a game played by more than 50 million people. Every year, some 1.2 billion golf balls are manufactured around the world. In fact, the hard ball with the small dimples has long become an ingenious high-tech product with highly developed specific properties. The center of the ball is made using polybutadiene rubbers such as Buna CB and Taktene, which are made by LANXESS.

The footwear used in numerous sports – from jogging and ball games, to trekking and other outdoor activities – all have soles with non-slip grips that also offer carefully attuned shock-absorbing properties. And LANXESS supplies precisely the types of rubber needed to deliver these performance characteristics.

The specialty chemicals group is also playing its part in the 2008 Olympic Games in China. The designers responsible for the roof of the Tianjin Olympic Center Stadium in Beijing decided to use the sealant material Buna EP T 6470, a rubber produced by LANXESS’s Technical Rubber Products business unit. The 78,000 square-meter arena will host the Olympic soccer matches.

Shanghai, April 17, 2008