The new polysilicon site in the US state of Tennessee officially opened. The site in Charleston is WACKER’s largest single investment ever, totaling some US$ 2.5 billion. We finished commissioning the production facilities there on schedule in the third quarter. Full capacity is over 20,000 metric tons per annum. Around 650 people work at the Charleston site.

WACKER began expanding its production capacities for silicone rubber at the Jincheon site in South Korea. We are erecting new plants for manufacturing more silicone sealants, specialty silicones and liquid silicone rubber for the construction, electronics and automotive industries.

To mark World Refugee Day on June 20, SchlaU, a Munich-based refugee initiative, and Wacker Chemie AG launched a project to enable young refugees in the Bavarian district of Altötting to start their working lives. We donated a total of € 200,000 to the SchlaU School. The collaboration with WACKER’s Burghausen Vocational Training Center (BBiW) aims to help young refugees living in Bavaria’s Altötting district learn German and to find them suitable training places.

Dr. Alexander Filippou, Professor of Inorganic Chemistry at the University of Bonn, Germany, received the 2016 WACKER Silicone Award. The award was presented at the eighth European Silicon Days in Pozna?, Poland, in recognition of Filippou’s groundbreaking work in the field of organosilicon chemistry.

WACKER presented the Alexander Wacker Innovation Award 2016 to a research team in Burghausen for developing a 3D printing process. The first industrial 3D printer manufactures parts from silicones. The high-tech printer is called ACEO^® Imagine Series K, and the procedure developed by WACKER researchers is a milestone in additive manufacturing.

WACKER is boosting its R&D for silicones in the USA with a new lab complex in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The complex is dedicated to developing new products and business fields in North, Central and South America, and will officially open in the first half of 2017.

At the K 2016 plastics show in Düsseldorf, WACKER presented innovative products and technologies for key industries such as the automotive, electronics, lighting and healthcare sectors. Among other innovations, WACKER showcased textile sensors of silicone film, crystal-clear encapsulation compounds for LEDs, and optical lenses. WACKER also presented the world’s first-ever industrial 3D printer for silicones.

A pilot reactor for vinyl acetate-ethylene copolymer (VAE) dispersions came on stream at the Nanjing site in the Chinese province of Jiangsu. With the new plant, we are intensifying our local R&D and expanding our local product developments, application technology and customer service offerings.

WACKER BIOSOLUTIONS acquired a large-scale fermentation plant in northern Spain. The plant at the León site will produce cysteine for foods and pharmaceutical products by fermentation processes. The acquisition is a strategic step toward meeting our customers’ cysteine demand in the long term and offering other bioengineered products.