WACKER is a globally active company with state-of-the-art specialty chemical products. Our portfolio includes over 3,200 products supplied to more than 3,500 customers in over 100 countries. WACKER products are found in countless everyday items, ranging from cosmetic powders to solar cells.

Silicon Is Our Main Starting Material

Most of our products are based on inorganic starting materials. Silicon-based products account for 80 percent of WACKER sales, and products that are primarily ethylene-related for 20 percent. Our customers come from virtually every major sector, ranging from consumer goods, food, pharmaceuticals, textiles and the solar, electrical/electronics and base-chemical industries, to medical technology, biotech and mechanical engineering. As a manufacturer of silicones and polymers, WACKER is particularly well represented in the automotive and construction sectors. We are also a key supplier of silicon wafers to the semiconductor industry. In recent years, we have greatly expanded our polycrystalline-silicon business for the solar industry, where WACKER is one of the world’s largest manufacturers.

Technical Competence Centers Support Sales and Marketing Activities

WACKER operates all over the world. Our sales strategy is centered around expanding our presence in growth markets. Our sales organization is supplemented not only by a network of technical competence centers, where customers learn about WACKER’s product portfolio, but also by the WACKER ACADEMY, where we offer technical training sessions on our products and their application fields. In 2013, we opened a new technical competence center for carpet applications in Mexico and Dalton (Georgia, USA). At the same time, we set up new WACKER ACADEMY branches there. We expanded our existing technical competence centers in São Paulo (Brazil) and in Singapore. In total, WACKER has 52 sales offices in 28 countries.

New Dispersion Plants Come on Stream in China and South Korea

WACKER’s integrated global production system consists of 24 production sites (2012: 24). Of these, eight are in Europe, seven in the Americas and nine in Asia. The Group’s key production site is Burghausen (Germany), with some 9,700 employees (incl. temporary workers and trainees). In 2013, Burghausen’s manufacturing output reached around 680,000 metric tons, accounting for over 50 percent of groupwide production output. Alongside Burghausen, Nünchritz is WACKER’s second multidivisional site. In 2013, we started up additional production capacities for vinyl acetate-ethylene copolymer (VAE) dispersions at Nanjing (China) and Ulsan (South Korea).