66 Innovation and Employees
Innovation and Employees
Innovation
As a specialty chemicals company, innovations are an important
factor for ALTANA, enabling us to offer our customers
new, competitive solutions and at the same time to meet
cutting-edge requirements regarding performance profile,
costs, environmental protection, and sustainability. Thanks to
close cooperation with our customers we are integrated
into new fields of development at an early stage and thus can
develop customized solutions quickly and reliably. We build
on existing competencies, on the one hand, and gain access
to new ones on the other, in order to continuously adapt
our product portfolio to market and customer needs. Stateof
the-art analytics in chemical labs as well as application
technology testing laboratories geared to specific features are
available to our researchers and developers for targeted
development.
In addition to the development activities in the business
divisions, selected innovations are initiated and coordinated
at the ALTANA level, aimed at tapping new business
fields and absorbing technology and market trends. This is
achieved through different procedures, namely, through
the ALTANA Institute, the central management of technology
platforms, as well as corporate venturing investments.
With the help of the ALTANA Institute, external networks
and close cooperation with universities and research institutes
around the world are used to harness outside impetus.
Through the use of a successful open-innovation approach
coupled with the use of synergies by our divisions, ALTANA
manages to create long-term and partially transformative
innovations and to develop solutions.
Within the framework of technology platforms, based
on the work of past years ALTANA advanced digital print-
ing processes and the printing inks and materials needed for
printed electronics. Additionally, initiatives in the field of
3D printing were bolstered, ventures whose success opens
up further possibilities in additive manufacturing. In 2018,
ALTANA also expanded its competencies in the field of new
innovative coating technologies, including laser transfer
printing technology.
Due to the close cooperation with the central department
Corporate Venturing, technology and market potential
are continually examined, and through targeted invest-
ments in transformative technology entry into new attractive
markets developed. In this context, ALTANA acquired a
stake in the Israeli industrial digital printing company Velox
Ltd. in 2018, thus expanding its technology and invest-
ment portfolio in this area.
The basis of our innovative strength is an open and
dynamic corporate culture that gives the 1,128 employees in
our research and development centers around the world
the freedom to act creatively and entrepreneurially. The equipment
in our development centers enables our employees
to implement their ideas in marketable solutions. In the year
under review, expenses for research and development
Research and development expenses (in € million )
2014 113.9
2015 128.1
2016 129.3
2017 142.5
2018 154.1