WACKER received an award for outstanding services to social integration from the Upper Bavarian government. The award was in recognition of its sustained support of “Die Arche” (The Ark), a children’s charity in the Moosach district of Munich. Since 2007, the company has donated € 100,000 annually to this charity. The Ark provides assistance to children from socially disadvantaged families, many of whom are from abroad.

Wacker Chemie AG and the Chinese Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) reached an amicable agreement on the issue of polysilicon exports to China. WACKER undertook not to sell polysilicon produced at its European sites below a specific minimum price in China. MOFCOM, in turn, refrained from imposing anti-dumping and anti-subsidy tariffs on this material.

WACKER invested about € 20 million in production capacities for dispersible polymer powders at its Burghausen site. The Group is constructing a new spray dryer there with an annual capacity of 50,000 metric tons. This facility is scheduled for completion in the first quarter of 2015 and will be one of the largest of its kind worldwide.

The WACKER Silicone Award went to Akira Sekiguchi, a professor of organic chemistry at the University of Tsukuba in Japan. The € 10,000 award was conferred on August 4, 2014 during the 7th European Silicon Days in Berlin. In 2003, Sekiguchi had been the first to synthesize molecules with stable silicon-silicon triple bonds and to verify them by means of X-ray crystallography. These and numerous other studies have made Sekiguchi a pioneer in the field of organosilicon research.

Robert Bosch GmbH awarded WACKER its Preferred Supplier status for elastomers and thermosetting plastics. The Stuttgart-based technology and service provider gave WACKER top marks in the categories of quality, logistics, innovation and strategic collaboration. As a Preferred Supplier, WACKER can now participate even more in the development of this customer’s new products and technologies. Bosch assigns its Preferred Supplier status annually to the best of its 4,000 suppliers in its subassemblies and materials groups.

Wacker Chemie AG celebrated its 100th anniversary on October 13. That was the day, in 1914, when Alexander Wacker entered the “Dr. Alexander Wacker Gesellschaft für elektrochemische Industrie, KG” in the commercial register of Traunstein, thereby laying the foundations of the WACKER Group. Wacker was born in Heidelberg in 1846. A businessman, he initially joined forces with Sigmund Schuckert to spread electrification across Germany. In 1903, he established the “Consortium für elektrochemische Industrie,” which is WACKER’s presentday corporate research arm. That original seed would later grow into Wacker-Chemie GmbH (its name until 2005) and today’s Wacker Chemie AG (since 2006). The company celebrated the day of its founding at an event in Munich with some 500 guests, including Bavaria’s Minister President, Horst Seehofer.

The Bavarian government presented WACKER with its Bavarian Energy Award in Nuremberg. The award cited the Group’s highly efficient polysilicon manufacturing operations. Using advanced, patented technology and process optimizations, WACKER had lowered its specific energy consumption for polysilicon production by 29 percent. Hyperpure polysilicon is the main raw material for making solar modules and, consequently, plays a vital role in generating solar power.