Being partner of choice through reliability
Throughout the Group and beyond, Evonik promotes a culture whose criteria for success are the courage to innovate, sparing no effort and responsible action. This makes us both a reliable and a preferred cooperation partner for our customers, suppliers and business partners as well as for public institutions and our neighbors. Even though our roots lie in Germany, the concept of cooperation on a global scale is an integral part of our business model. Trust and reliability are key to sustaining long-term partnerships—especially with regard to the close research and development cooperation we maintain with customers, colleges and universities in many countries.
Cooperating closely with customers and partners
Trust in a partner’s reliability is the foundation of every customer relationship. This applies
all the more when it comes to developing products proactively, in other words, manufacturing a
component in-house for a customer’s end product. As was the case with the Predator® Absolute soccer
boot worn by Germany’s team captain Michael Ballack among others at the FIFA World Cup 2006. The
top-of-the-line boot by adidas AG of Herzogenaurach is—appropriate to the sport involved—the
product of real team work between the sportswear manufacturer, a processing company and our
Chemicals Business Area or, more precisely, our Performance Polymers Business Unit. Its product
VESTAMID® E is used in the boot to play a vital supporting role in the truest sense. This is
because the outer soles and the fastening system for the replaceable cleats are made using our
polyamide 12 elastomers. These tailor-made plastics not only make the sole more flexible and
lightweight. They also make it more stable. Not only that, the jointly developed fastening system
for the cleats gives soccer stars a more secure footing and helps them to take more powerful shots.
Not that this product is simply a one-off masterpiece. The team partners have been working together
since the launch of the model series, with the current shoe representing the sixth Predator®
generation.
Many of the cooperative ventures in which we develop new products with customers and business
partners are equally long-lasting. Joint ventures such as the one with SolarWorld Group represent a
case in point. Here, the roles are clearly defined: Evonik produces the precursors trichlorosilane
and monosilane. The joint venture JSSI uses these to manufacture solar silicon, which in turn is
used by SolarWorld as a raw material for its wafers and solar cells. The contract to supply the
solar silicon produced at the plant in Rheinfelden is of ten years’ duration—and bears impressive
testimony to the trust in the reliability of the partners involved. For our internal start-ups such
as CREASORB®, which developed the water-absorbing product STOCKOSORB®, partnerships and cooperative
ventures are actually an indispensable aspect of bringing new business strategies to market.
To expand our leading position as a specialist, we work closely with universities across the
globe. The list of our cooperation partners in the scientific community is long, and includes over
250 universities—from Chemnitz, Frankfurt am Main and Münster in Germany through St. Gallen in
Switzerland and Moscow in Russia all the way to Beijing and Shanghai in China. Our project houses
and science-to-business centers even allow company researchers to work with academic scientists
under the same roof. The collaborative associations with individual research institutes frequently
go back many years. After all, partnerships are relationships of trust. And nothing builds trust
like longstanding experience of mutual reliability.
