Management Board
Dear Ladies and Gentlemen,
In 2019, ALTANA mastered a challenging market environment and at the same time
took major strides in setting the course for our long-term growth. Due to the economic
headwind, we were not able to achieve our ambitious sales and earnings targets, but
we once again succeeded in demonstrating ALTANA’s financial and innovative strength.
In order to remain on a sustainable success path, we invested heavily in the future.
While our ACTEGA division continued on its growth path due to the good demand for
coating and packaging solutions from consumer-related customer industries, the ALTANA
Group’s overall sales and earnings lagged behind the strong level of the previous year.
This development was driven by sluggish demand from key industrial sectors, especially
the automotive industry, as well as by the general economic slowdown, especially
in China. Nevertheless, the EBITDA margin remained within the long-term target range
of 18 to 20 percent, despite substantial spending on research and development and
digitalization.
In 2019, we continued to push forward the development of promising technologies to
pave the way for future profitable growth. For instance, the up-and-coming 3D printer
manufacturer dp polar, in which ALTANA has held a stake since 2017, used our material
development knowhow to present a 3D printing solution that offers customers from
a wide range of sectors, including the automotive, aerospace, and medical technology
industries, completely new possibilities for manufacturing their products. The positive
feedback from potential users at the world’s largest 3D printing tradeshow Formnext confirmed
the high potential of this technology.
ALTANA’s internal startup ACTEGA Metal Print is also about to launch a promising technology
on the market. The technology enables packaging to be metallized with substantially
less material and considerably lower costs and production time than conventional
methods. The Printed Electronics technology platform, meanwhile, succeeded in developing
a technically sophisticated product portfolio for conductive inks and initiated the
first customer projects following intensive research and development at the ELANTAS site
in Hamburg.