Production

Over the next two years, WACKER will bring additional new production capacity on stream. Our focus remains on WACKER POLYSILICON. At Nünchritz (Germany), polysilicon production should come on stream in 2011. Planning work for a potential polysilicon site in Tennessee (USA) will progress in 2010 – including preparations for the submission of approval documentation.

Process development will be a priority in the next few years as we focus on cost and quality leadership in manufacturing. Where we are the leader, we will reinforce our position. Where we are not, we will strive for leadership. Our declared goal is to constantly enhance technologies and not to simply copy them. So, we will be extending our network with universities and scientific institutes to enable the transfer of state-of-the-art technological developments and engineering methods. We have consolidated our expertise in this area in a central process-development department, which is itself part of our innovation management function.

Similarly, we will continue to standardize and optimize our engineering processes across every region. In China and the USA, for example, we have set up regional engineering units, which collaborate closely with WACKER’s Corporate Engineering department in Germany. Such measures ensure that our engineering expertise grows at our non-German sites, too.

Maintenance costs will rise moderately in 2010. This is mainly due to significant asset additions in recent years, particularly at WACKER POLYSILICON.