Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure

Economic growth, social development and climate action are heavily dependent on investments in infrastructure, sustainable industrial development and technological progress.

Innovations play a key role in aligning Evonik systematically with sustainability and profitable growth. In this way, we are also helping our customers to achieve their own climate protection, circularity, and biodiversity objectives.

R&D activities are managed by our RD&I function. This comprises the R&D teams of the growth divisions, innovation management, Creavis as a business incubator and strategic research unit, and Evonik Venture Capital. It comprises more than 40 sites worldwide with around 2,700 R&D employees. In 2022, R&D expenditures amounted to €460 million.

The three growth divisions (Nutrition & Care, Smart Materials and Specialty Additives) focus on six innovation growth fields:

• Sustainable Nutrition: establishing new products and services for sustainable nutrition of livestock and people.
• Healthcare Solutions: developing new materials for implants, as components of cell culture media, and for custom-tailored, innovative drug formulations.
• Advanced Food Ingredients: creating a portfolio of health-enhancing substances and nutritional supplements as a contribution to healthy nutrition.
• Membranes: extending SEPURAN® technology for efficient gas separation to further applications.
• Cosmetic Solutions: developing further products based on natural sources for cosmetics and sensorially optimized formulations for skincare products.
• Additive Manufacturing: developing products and technol­ogies for additive manufacturing.

Creavis serves the Evonik Group as an innovation driver for resource-saving solutions with a perspective that goes beyond 2025. In this role, it develops transformative innovations beyond the product and market focus of the operational units. Creavis bundles its activities in three incubation clusters:

• Defossilation cluster helps industries become less dependent on fossil raw materials by developing high-growth solutions that make a contribution to the transition to a circular, climate-neutral economy.
• Life Sciences cluster focuses on novel concepts for resource-saving and sustainable food production for the world’s continuously growing population. Another focal area is preventing and curing diseases, especially as many people are living to an advanced age.
• Beyond Chemistry fosters traceable, secure, and circular value chains based on domain knowledge and data-based solutions. These increase the transparency, effec­tiveness, and sustainability of industrial systems.

Research, development & innovation

• Generate more than €1 billion in additional sales 1 in our six innovation growth fields by 2025.

Product stewardship

• Add substances/products from acquisitions to the Chemicals-Management-System (CMS/CMSPLUS) and process them by the end of 2023.

Circular economy

• Generate more than €350 million in additional sales with solutions for the circular plastics economy from 2030. Solutions for around 400,000 metric tons of recyclable plastics by 2025.