Key Events 2015 – 2016

A new health center for the Burghausen site: WACKER invested some €4 million to build the new center, which features state-of-the-art medical technology to provide flexible health care to the site’s approximately 10,000 employees. The center’s outpatient facility is staffed around the clock with paramedics. This investment underpins WACKER’s commitment as an employer to the health of its employees – especially in light of a longer working life.

WACKER commissioned a new production plant for food-grade polyvinyl acetate (PVAc) solid resins at its Nanjing site in China. The solid resins are used for manufacturing gumbase. The Group invested around €20 million in this expansion project, strengthening its position as the world’s leading manufacturer of PVAc solid resins for the chewing-gum industry. With an annual capacity of 20,000 metric tons, the plant is the largest of its kind in Asia and is certified to the highest food standards.

Siltronic shares started trading on June 11, 2015 in the regulated market segment (Prime Standard) of the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. A total of 12.65 million shares were placed, consisting of 5 million new shares issued through a capital increase at Siltronic and 7.65 million shares originally held by WACKER. The issue price was set at €30 per share. The total proceeds from the IPO amounted to just under €380 million. At the time, the free float for Siltronic AG stood at 42.2 percent, with WACKER holding a 57.8-percent stake in the company.

The weekly publication ICIS Chemical Business named WACKER as its Company of the Year. The jury stated that WACKER had achieved strong growth in 2014, kept costs under control and pushed profits and margins higher despite a difficult global economic and oil-price environment. The Group had increased its 2014 sales under challenging conditions and was well-positioned for future gains. The jury’s analysis took into account absolute and year-over-year performance in terms of sales, the operating result, profits and the EBITDA margin.

The German Chemical Industry Association (VCI) held a Responsible Care^® competition in the reporting year on the theme of: “We have good ideas for transport safety and sustainable logistics.” At the award ceremony in Hamburg, the VCI honored a WACKER project designed to optimize overseas freight shipments. WACKER had submitted a sustainable strategy for efficient container management. The strategy has reduced the number of empty containers transported since 2011 by 20 percent, thereby cutting CO₂ emissions, too. The jury praised the “quantifiable success” and “optimization of the entire logistics chain.” Prior to this, the Bavarian branch of the German Chemical Industry Association (VCI) had already presented its Responsible Care^® Award to WACKER for this project.

WACKER started operating a new plant for vinyl acetate-ethylene (VAE) copolymer dispersions at its US site in Calvert City, Kentucky. The Group invested around €50 million in expanding production and infrastructure there. This additional capacity enables WACKER to meet rising global demand for dispersions and dispersible polymer powders. WACKER has been manufacturing such products at its Calvert City site since 1998.

Dr. Joachim Rauhut, CFO of Wacker Chemie AG, left the company as planned when his contract expired on October 31, 2015. Dr. Tobias Ohler, a WACKER Executive Board member since early 2013, took over as CFO. Dr. Christian Hartel, previously in charge of WACKER SILICONES, joined the Executive Board effective November 1, 2015.

WACKER has been gradually starting up its facilities at the new polysilicon production site in Charleston, Tennessee (USA) since December 2015. The new site is the largest investment project in the Group’s history to date. The decision to build in Tennessee is part of WACKER’s strategy of operating fully integrated, local sites for silicon-based products in the world’s key economic regions.

WACKER expanded its technical competence center in Singapore to include a new development and test lab for silicone elastomers, which are used, for example, in the electronics and healthcare sectors. The silicone and polymeric-binder labs for construction applications were also newly furnished.

The new polysilicon site in the US state of Tennessee was formally opened. The site in Charleston is WACKER’s single largest 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 positions.

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 event in Poznań, 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 considered 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 is scheduled to begin operations 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 is to 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.