Vision and Goals
Founded on a vision and five goals, our strategy is an appreciation of what we aspire to achieve. Our strategy is focused on profitable growth and the goal of attaining a leading competitive position in most of our business fields, while observing the principle of sustainable development.
WACKER’s Vision
We develop intelligent solutions for sustainable growth.
As an innovative chemical company, WACKER 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 are constantly working on enhancing our product quality and improving 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, take initiative 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 are skilled at transferring newly developed production processes to globally competitive manufacturing plants. At WACKER, innovation also means “making what is good even better.” Our “Wacker Operating System” (WOS) program aims at systematically optimizing our processes. Employees receive the necessary training at our own WOS academies. 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 an integral part of our corporate policies. We measure our success against clearly defined indicators 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 increase our competitive edge – in cost, quality and technology. - Our responsibility as a company extends beyond our business activities.
Our commitment to sustainability encompasses ecological, economic 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. Driven by our deeply rooted values, we take on social responsibility. We pursue this commitment near our sites and wherever people are in need 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.
Up-and-Coming Fields
WACKER Products
Energy
Polysilicon, and dispersible polymer powders for the insulation of buildings
Urbanization and construction
Silicone resin emulsion paints, dispersible polymer powders (tile adhesives, flooring and sealing systems), dispersions for paints and coatings
Digitalization
Silicon wafers, silicones for encapsulation of electronic components, polysilicon
Rising affluence in emerging countries
Silicones (textiles, construction, electronics, cosmetics), cyclodextrins (food/agriculture), dispersible polymer powders (construction), dispersions (paper and packaging industries)
New Strategic Goals until 2020
In 2016, we presented our strategy for the WACKER Group until 2020. Our strategic goals for the next few years are:
- Expanding our production capacities, with capital expenditures below depreciation.
- Growing faster than the chemical-industry average.
- Focusing even more strongly on sustainability.
- achieve attractive margins within the business cycle.
- Increasing our cash inflow from operating activities.
As part of the “focusing even more strongly on sustainability” strategic goal, we have initiated the WACKER Sustainable Solutions 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. Governments and civil society were consulted when 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that are to be fulfilled in all countries across the world were drawn up.
WACKER is committed to responsible stewardship and contributes to the implementation of the following SDGs, in particular:
SDG 4: Quality Education
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.
SDG 7: Affordable and Clean Energy
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. It 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.
SDG 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth
WACKER ensures that its employees can realize their potential, assume responsibility and contribute their own ideas by offering them basic and advanced training opportunities. We want our employees to have 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. Further, our aim is to ensure that any employees who are disabled or have chronic health issues are integrated in the workplace over the long term. Vocational training has always been a focus of WACKER’s personnel-development activities. We offer our employees attractive compensation, good promotion prospects and a share in our company’s success.
SDG 9: Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure
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.
SDG 12: Responsible Consumption and Production
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.
SDG 13: Climate Action
With our products, we contribute to reducing the emission 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 generators, and silicon-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.
SDG 17: Partnerships for the Goals
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.
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.