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In 2011, Evonik generated sales of €1.9 billion with products and applications that
were developed in the last five years—and there will be more to come. Indeed, the
Group’s R&D pipeline is amply filled with and balanced by 450 short-, medium-,
and long-term projects. Last year, the first patent applications placed Evonik among
the leaders in specialty chemistry; in 2011, we filed 300 new patents, while our
total number of patents and applications exceeded 24,000.
Our R&D activities are guided by our strategy of concentrating on high-growth
megatrends such as health, nutrition, resource efficiency, and globalization—on
forward-looking markets that create not only financial, but also social value. In other
words, we keep investing in R&D a rich store of resources for the purpose of protecting
our natural resources. And to ensure that this stockpile does not dwindle
away, we increased our R&D expenditures in 2011 to €365 million, or eight percent
more than the previous year.
This is money well spent, as is demonstrated by our Project House Systems Integration,
which is now wrapping up its activities. The employees of the project house
found solutions for plastic glazing for cars, concentrating solar thermal energy,
and for the production of thin fibers for filtration applications. As disparate as these
developments are, they all share the same goals: They advance the development of
sustainable products and processes, in keeping with our strategy, and they make
an important contribution to energy and resource efficiency. Of the nine projects
the project house worked on in its three-year run, seven have already been returned
to the participating business lines, which are now bringing them to market maturity.
These results are also striking for the fact that the project house began its activities
in early 2009 at an ill-omened time: The height of the financial and economic crisis,
when economizing was paramount. Evonik cut costs like everyone else, but not in
R&D. We launched the project house as planned.
Another example of our commitment to using our research to save resources can
be found in our Health & Nutrition Business Unit, which is currently expanding
its market activities to aquaculture. Adding our amino acids to fish feed can save
valuable fish meal that would otherwise have to be mixed with the feed as a source
of protein, and which often comes from natural stocks of wild marine animals.
At least three kilograms of captured fish are required to produce one kilogram of
edible fish. Our amino acids also allow fish and crustaceans to digest the feed better,
so that more animals receive optimal nutrition with the same amount of feed. For
this reason, Health & Nutrition has developed new products that are an optimized
methionine source for shrimp and other crustaceans—innovative products designed
to help ensure that fewer wild fish are required for aquaculture. This preserves the
stocks of wild fish, and it counteracts overfishing. These new products are perhaps
only a small but nevertheless effective step toward a future in which we will have
to feed a constantly growing world population. In my view, this future will be worth
living only if we succeed in utilizing food, as a resource, as efficiently as possible.
edItoRIAL 3
Patrik Wohlhauser
Member of the Executive Board
of Evonik Industries AG
elements39 Issue 2|2012