Group Management Report Products Safety and Health Environment Human Resources Social Commitment Consolidated Financial Statements 75
Expected Developments
Future Orientation of the Group
We do not plan on making any fundamental changes to
the Group’s strategy or organizational structure in the next
two years. The focus on specialty markets and the offer of
innovative chemical solutions based on our customers’ requirements
will continue to drive our business development.
We do not expect our entry into new market segments
or application areas to lead to any significant changes in
our sales structure in the medium term. We also expect the
balanced regional sales distribution to basically remain
stable.
Acquisitions, however, could lead to changes in our sales
and market structures. Bolt-on acquisitions and particu-
larly the integration of a new business division could result
in a shift.
In the future, the area of occupational safety and the
focus on environmentally compatible management will
continue to result in ambitious targets that will impact the
ALTANA Group’s strategic orientation.
Economic and Industry Outlook
For 2022, ALTANA expects global economic growth to
continue, albeit at a slower pace than in the previous year.
The global recovery of the national economies since the
end of 2020 and the related strong increase in demand were
followed by a significant rise in raw material and energy
costs, bottlenecks in the provision of logistics services, and,
as a result, disruptions in global supply chains. Based on
these influencing factors, the International Monetary Fund
(IMF) forecasts a 4.4 % increase in global economic output,
following a 5.9 % rise in 2021. Expectations for overall economic
development are fundamentally dampened by the
risk of further coronavirus variants, which could lead to renewed
pandemic-related restrictions on public life.
Economic growth will be somewhat weaker in the industrialized
countries than in the emerging and developing ones.
The IMF expects the industrialized nations as a whole to grow
by 3.9 % in 2022 (previous year: 5.0 %), with different
economies benefiting to varying degrees. In the U.S., growth
of 4.0 % is forecast for 2022. Here, the expansion of 5.6 %
in 2021 already more than offset the percentage decline in
2020. In the Eurozone, the IMF expects a growth rate of
3.9 %, after the sharp pandemic-related decline was not fully
compensated for in 2021 despite 5.2 % growth. For Ger-
many, however, the IMF assumes that the GDP slump in 2020
can be fully offset by growth of 2.7 % in 2021 and fore-
cast growth of 3.8 % in 2022. In all countries, the anticipated
economic recovery depends on whether the pandemic
will become increasingly manageable and on there being no
further disruptions to supply chains and subsequent price
increases and production bottlenecks.
According to the IMF forecast, growth in the emerging
markets will total 4.8 % in 2022 (previous year: 6.5 %)
and thus exceed the global average. The picture continues
to vary in relation to individual economies. Based on this
forecast, China will no longer have the highest growth rate.
After stellar growth of 8.1 % in 2021, the growth rate is
expected to fall to 4.8 %, slightly above the global level. According
to the IMF, this is mainly due to disruptions in residential
construction. In view of the strict zero-covid strategy
in China, which is giving rise to recurring restrictions on
public life and poorer employment prospects in the construction
sector, private consumption is likely to be lower. India,
on the other hand, is expected to continue to grow at an
above-average rate. The forecast growth rate of 9.0 %
for 2022 is on a par with growth in 2021, meaning that India
has far more than compensated for the pandemic-induced
decline. Overall, the Latin American economies are expected
to show below-average growth of 2.4 %. Brazil, which
was able to compensate for the pandemic-related losses with
4.7 % growth in the previous year, is forecast to post lower