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By Mary Page Bailey | October 1, 2021
Evonik Industries AG (Essen, Germany) intends to sell its Lülsdorf site in the medium term. More detailed plans will be developed until spring 2022. The goal is to move the entire site to a new owner, selling parts of the business to various interested components are also being considered. The company took the decision to take this step as a component of the regulatory prevention of alxide production in Lülsdorf and in order to create customers for workers at an early stage.
Several potential investors have already expressed interest in the chemical site. “Lülsdorf has proven to be a place for fundamental chemicals for decades,” said Christian Kullmann, Chairman of the Board of Evonik. “However, by focusing on
As high-margin specialty chemicals, the continued progression of the site doesn’t make sense to us, so we started the search for new owners, to give the site more productive long-term shape. Lülsdorf has great potential as a chemical production site.
Evonik employs about six hundred more people at the site, south of Cologne. It basically produces alcoxide, potassium derivatives and, in mixture with plants in neighboring Wesseling, cyanide chlorides. The site and its activities generate an annual turnover of approximately 280 million euros. Its location in the center of the Western European chemical industry, as well as proper logistics links and a reliable source of raw fabrics, make it especially suitable for the production of high-volume initial and intermediate products.
“The greatest asset is the effective and experienced workforce that identifies so strongly with the site,” said Thomas Wessel, Evonik’s Director of Human Resources. more productive long-term owner(s) of the site. We will largely coordinate all next steps with the co-determination bodies. “
Lülsdorf’s activity belongs to the Functional Solutions business line, which is part of the Performance Materials division. Following the planned divestment of the superabsorbent business, the change of ownership to a new owner is the next logical step in aligning Evonik’s portfolio with the specialty. chemicals.
“It is smart that we now have a basic strategic resolution on the further progression of the site,” said Arndt Selbach, director of Evonik’s sites in Wesseling and Lülsdorf. “In the interest of employees, we will make any and all efforts to identify expressing characteristics of progression for Lülsdorf as temporarily as can be imagined, in order to provide transparent direction for the long term of the site and its employees. benefits from the existing production network and imaginable synergies with new products than Evonik, whose assets are exploited more at larger sites.
Lülsdorf has more than a hundred years of cultivation as a chemical production plant. Evonik produces alcoxidides, among others, which are manufactured by amalgam electrolysis. From the end of 2027, the operation of this procedure will no longer be imaginable due to the restrictions imposed. the relevant regulatory procedure has not yet been officially concluded, but no adjustments are expected.
Alcoxidides are for the production of biodiesel or, in the future, for the chemical recycling of PET. Evonik also produces them in plants in Argentina (Rosario) and the United States (Mobile).