Group Management Report Products Safety and Health Environment Human Resources Social Commitment Consolidated Financial Statements 87
Sustainable Product Strategy
ALTANA offers companies around the world specialty chem-
ical solutions that make products used in daily life better and
more sustainable. We convince our customers with added
value and give them a competitive edge through our work.
Some solutions improve the functions of end products and
increase their shelf life. Others optimize our customers’ value
chains in terms of energy and resource consumption. And
still others enable our customers to reduce the amount of
critical substances in their end products or to replace them
with less critical ones. Innovative, environmentally friendly,
safely processable products play a key role. They help
ALTANA’s customers implement their own sustainability concepts.
Based on this understanding of sustainability, the
Group continuously leverages new fields of business and paves
the way for further profitable growth.
Due to their strong customer orientation, many ALTANA
companies gear their innovation strategies systematically
to a catalog of sustainability criteria at a very early stage of
product development. This includes responsible handling
of resources (water, energy, and raw materials) as well as the
goal of developing products whose effects on the environment
are as low as possible without detracting from the prod-
uct’s function. This is reflected, for example, by the increas-
ing number of coatings, additives, and pigment formulations
that are conceived for water-based applications and do
not need organic solvents.
Another aim of ALTANA’s product strategy is to replace
critical components with less critical ones whenever possi-
ble. For products that need classifications due to national or
international hazardous substance regulations, ALTANA’s
companies have special data sheets on hand that provide con-
sumers with important information on safe storage and
further processing. Moreover, certified lifecycle analyses are
available for certain products. With an eye to an increas-
ing circular economy and to further improve the ecological
footprint of its products, ALTANA also evaluates the use of
renewable raw materials or raw materials from recycling
processes, without disregarding its high standards of quality
and compliance with chemical regulations. With the
ALTANA Excellence program, manufacturing processes are
constantly being optimized in terms of energy efficiency
as well as emissions and waste avoidance.
Products and Technologies for More Climate
Protection
In the year under review, all of our divisions made prog-
ress with products and technologies for greater climate pro-
tection.
At BYK, further additives were developed that can
significantly extend the electrochemical stability and shelf life
of batteries. They bring about improved distribution and
stabilization of the conductive carbon materials used, which
are deployed as electrode materials in lithium-ion batteries
in particular. This conserves resources and generates added
value for the customer.
ACTEGA continued the success story of PVC-free sealing
materials. While chlorinated compounds pollute the environment
during production and disposal, the newly devel-
oped materials make due without halogen-containing
materials. In addition, material savings of up to 30 % are possible
in the application and no harmful plasticizers are used.
This is a major advantage, and not only for sensitive applications
in the food sector. The energy requirements for the
manufacture and use of the materials are also lower, which
is reflected in a better CO² balance.
ELANTAS achieved a breakthrough with the use of a
new component for the manufacture of products based on
unsaturated polyesters. Monomers or diluents used in un-
saturated polyester resins often contain high levels of volatile
organic components and are sometimes of regulatory