Vision and Goals

GRI 102-15, GRI 103-2, GRI 201-1, GRI 103-1

Founded on a vision and goals, our strategy is an appreciation of what we aspire to achieve. Our focus is on profitable growth and securing a leading competitive position in most of our business fields. The fact that we have made sustainability one of our strategic goals emphasizes its importance.

WACKER’s Vision

We develop intelligent solutions for sustainable growth.

WACKER, as an innovative chemical company, makes a vital contribution to improving the quality of life around the world.

In the future, we want to continue developing and supplying solutions that meet our rigorous demands – creating added value for our customers and shareholders, and growing sustainably.

WACKER’s Goals

  • WACKER products and solutions are our customers’ first choice.
    All of our activities focus on our customers’ needs. Satisfied customers are the basis of our success.

    We aim to continuously raise our product quality and enhance our services. The better we succeed at this, the more we can grow with our customers, deepen our understanding of their needs and provide them with higher added value.

    To achieve this, WACKER focuses on direct contact and on exchanging information personally. Through our technical competence centers and the WACKER ACADEMY, we work closely with customers to develop tailored solutions. Our strength lies in our long-term relationships, based on trust, with the people in our markets.
  • We want to be one of the world’s best employers.
    Our employees’ health and safety are our greatest assets.

    At WACKER, the success we achieve together is based on a supportive and challenging environment. We ensure that our employees can develop their skills, realize their potential, assume responsibility, act proactively and contribute their own ideas by offering them basic and advanced training opportunities. What we expect is a performance-oriented mindset, coupled with sound professional and social skills.

    To this end, we want to provide secure jobs, exceptional employee benefits and a work culture that facilitates a positive work-life balance. Clearly focused on commercial success, we value teamwork that is based on mutual reliance, trust and fairness.
  • We tap new markets via product and process innovations for tomorrow’s world.
    We develop products that are vital for tomorrow’s world. That’s why we invest in research and development. Our innovative strength is reflected in the high sales percentage of new products.

    We know how to transfer new production methods from development to globally competitive plants. At WACKER, innovation also means “making what is good even better.” Our (WOS) program aims at systematically optimizing our processes. Employees receive the necessary training at our own WOS ACADEMY.

    As the quality and cost leader in many of our business sectors, we realize that “becoming better is a never-ending process.
  • We continuously increase our company value.
    WACKER sees itself as a performance-oriented company, geared toward increasing its long-term value. Economic success is essential for pursuing and achieving our strategic goals.

    Our annual sales should grow more than world GNP. We want to be among the most profitable companies in our industry. This is why value-based management is fundamental to our corporate policies. We measure our success against clearly defined key parameters and continuously focus on earning more than our cost of capital.

    We want to be among the top three suppliers in each of our business sectors. To this end, we always strive to strengthen our competitive edge in cost, quality and technology.
  • Our responsibility as a company extends beyond our business activities.
    Our commitment to sustainability encompasses ecological, economical and social aspects. Our actions are guided by the underlying principles of the UN’s Global Compact and the chemical industry’s Responsible Care® initiative.

    Our products, technologies and processes meet the highest standards. For years, sustainability has been an integral part of WACKER’s production and business processes. One of our greatest strengths is our closed material loops, where we use byproducts from one production stage as starting materials for making other products. This reduces our consumption of energy and other resources.

    Our strong sense of social responsibility is based on deeply rooted values. We pursue this commitment in the vicinity of our sites and wherever people are in distress around the world. Society’s trust in our actions is an essential component of our long-term economic success.

Our strategic goals are oriented toward the highly promising fields of energy, urbanization and construction, digitalization, and rising affluence in emerging countries. WACKER offers products that satisfy these global trends.

Megatrends

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

WACKER Products

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Icon – Energy (icon)

Energy

 

, and for the insulation of buildings

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Icon – Urbanization and Construction (icon)

Urbanization and Construction

 

resin emulsion paints, dispersible powders (tile adhesives, flooring and sealing systems), dispersions for paints and coatings

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Icon – Digitalization (icon)

Digitalization

 

, silicones for encapsulation of electronic components, polysilicon

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Icon – Greater Affluence in Emerging Countries (icon)

Greater Affluence in Emerging Countries

 

Silicones (textiles, construction, electronics, cosmetics), (food/agriculture), dispersible polymer powders (construction), dispersions (paper and packaging industries)

 

New Strategic Goals until 2020

As part of Capital Market Day in October 2016, we presented our strategy for the WACKER Group until 2020. Our strategic goals for the next years are:

  1. Expanding our production capacities, with capital expenditures below depreciation.
  2. Growing faster than the chemical-industry average.
  3. Focusing even more strongly on sustainability.
  4. Achieving attractive margins throughout the economic cycle.
  5. Increasing our cash inflow from operating activities.

As part of the “focusing even more strongly on sustainability” strategic goal, we have initiated a project that is aimed at developing a sustainable business strategy and focuses on the following topics:

  • Increasing the proportion of renewable raw materials in the chemical divisions (WACKER SILICONES, WACKER POLYMERS and WACKER BIOSOLUTIONS);
  • Systematically evaluating the life cycle of the portfolio;
  • Stepping up communication to customers about the added value of sustainable products.

Contribution to the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals

In September 2015, over 150 heads of state and government approved the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development at the UN Summit in New York. With the involvement of governments and civil society, 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that are to be fulfilled in all countries across the world were drawn up. These SDGs build on the Millennium Development Goals that were adopted by the United Nations in 2000 and were to be achieved by the end of 2015.

WACKER is committed to responsible stewardship and contributes to the implementation of the following SDGs, in particular:

WACKER’s Contribution to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals

UN Goal

WACKER’s Contribution

UN Goal

SDG – Quality education (logo)

WACKER’s Contribution

The WACKER relief fund (WACKER HILFSFONDS) provides support to victims of natural disasters and helps rebuild devastated regions. Here, the foundation focuses on education for children and young people.

UN Goal

SDG – Affordable and clean energy (logo)

WACKER’s Contribution

The energy sources of the future are the sun, wind, water, biomass and geothermal power. WACKER is making a significant contribution to their efficient use. WACKER is among the main suppliers worldwide of polysilicon for the production of solar modules, for example. Wind turbines consist of composite materials that are bonded together. This requires high-impact modifiers, supplied, for instance, by WACKER. Silicone films from WACKER are used to convert wave power into electricity.

UN Goal

SDG – Decent work and economic growth (logo)

WACKER’s Contribution

WACKER ensures that its employees can realize their potential, assume responsibility and contribute their own ideas by offering them basic and advanced training opportunities. To this end, we want to provide secure jobs, generous employee benefits and a work culture that facilitates a positive work-life balance. We place great emphasis on offering all our employees equal opportunities and humane working conditions. It is furthermore our aim to permanently integrate employees who are disabled or suffer from long-term occupational disabilities. Vocational training has always been a key focus of personnel development at WACKER. We offer our employees attractive compensation and promotion prospects and share our company’s success with them.

UN Goal

SDG – Industry, innovation and infrastructure (logo)

WACKER’s Contribution

Through our R&D activities, we are pursuing the goal of creating innovative products and applications for new markets and promoting future trends such as sustainable energy production and storage, the increase in mobility, urbanization, digitalization and the rise in prosperity.

UN Goal

SDG – Responsible consumption and production (logo)

WACKER’s Contribution

We regard lowering our consumption of raw materials, energy and water as a key aspect of sustainable business management. Reducing solid, liquid and gaseous waste – in particular greenhouse gases – is a perpetual goal. In integrated production, we minimize waste by feeding byproducts back into the production loop. Waste heat from one process is utilized in other chemical processes. We endeavor to avoid waste throughout a product’s entire life cycle.

UN Goal

SDG – Climate Action (logo)

WACKER’s Contribution

With our products, we contribute to reducing the of gases that are harmful to the climate. This includes products for insulating buildings, silicone resins for facade protection, polysilicon for the production of solar modules, heat-transfer fluids for solar power plants, and -based materials for lithium-ion batteries. In our own production, we are continuously improving the energy efficiency of the processes, thus lowering the specific energy consumption and associated specific CO2 emissions.

UN Goal

SDG – Partnerships for the goals (logo)

WACKER’s Contribution

WACKER collaborates with suppliers and customers worldwide to promote sustainable business practices. Two global initiatives form the basis for sustainable corporate management at WACKER: the chemical industry’s Responsible Care® initiative and the UN’s Global Compact. WACKER is a member of the Together for Sustainability (TfS) initiative. It aims at developing a global program for responsible procurement of goods and services and improving the ecological and social standards of suppliers.

WACKER supports the SDG
Guidelines for using the SDG icons: (PDF:) PDF
http://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/news/communications-material/

The depicted SDGs describe:

  • The global challenges that WACKER can help overcome,
  • The significant opportunities for WACKER’s operations, and
  • The guiding principle for innovations at WACKER.

Wacker Operating System (WOS)
The “Wacker Operating System” (WOS) program bundles, promotes and processes corporate projects for systematic process improvement. It is the basis for a groupwide improvement initiative by WACKER.
Polysilicon
Hyperpure polycrystalline silicon from WACKER POLYSILICON is used for manufacturing wafers for the electronics and solar industries. To produce it, metallurgical-grade silicon is converted into liquid trichlorosilane, highly distilled and deposited in hyperpure form at 1,000 °C.
Dispersible Polymer Powders
Created by drying dispersions in spray or disc dryers. VINNAPAS® polymer powders from WACKER are recommended as binders in the construction industry, e.g. for tile adhesives, self-leveling compounds and repair mortars. The powders improve adhesion, cohesion, flexibility and flexural strength, as well as water-retention and processing properties.
Silicones
General term used to describe compounds of organic molecules and silicon. According to their areas of application, silicones can be classified as fluids, resins or rubber grades. Silicones are characterized by a myriad of outstanding properties. Typical areas of application include construction, the electrical and electronics industries, shipping and transportation, textiles and paper coatings.
Polymer
A polymer is a large molecule made up of smaller molecular units (monomers). It contains between 10,000 and 100,000 monomers. Polymers can be long or ball-shaped.
Silicon Wafer
A silicon wafer is a disc with a thickness of between approximately 200 and 800 µm, and is used by the semiconductor industry for the manufacture of semiconductor devices, i.e. integrated circuits and discrete components.
Cyclodextrins
Cyclodextrins belong to the family of cyclic oligosaccharides (i.e. ring-shaped sugar molecules). They are able to encapsulate foreign substances such as fragrances and to release active ingredients at a controlled rate. Cyclodextrins are produced and marketed by WACKER BIOSOLUTIONS.
Emission
Substance outputs, noise, vibrations, light, heat or radiation emitted into the environment by an industrial plant.
Silicon
After oxygen, silicon is the most common element on the earth’s crust. In nature, it occurs without exception in the form of compounds, chiefly silicon dioxide and silicates. Silicon is obtained through energy-intensive reaction of quartz sand with carbon and is the most important raw material in the electronics industry.