Covestro creates the foundation for sustainable growth
Covestro has restructured its organisation effective 1 July 2021, and successfully reorganised its previously three segments – polyurethanes, polycarbonates, and coatings, adhesives, specialties – into seven new, tailored business entities. The company has thus achieved a first milestone in implementing its new “sustainable future” strategy, which the group had presented in February 2021. The vision of Covestro to become fully circular is the guiding principle of this strategy.
02 Jul 2021 | By Rahul Kumar
“We’re serious about sustainability and are systematically working toward a circular economy. That will enable us to position Covestro ideally for the future,” said Dr Markus Steilemann, CEO, Covestro. “Our new structure now forms the foundation for further implementing our strategy and achieving sustainable growth. We’ll become an even better partner to our customers and thus increase our competitiveness further.”
In keeping with the first chapter of the strategy – “Become the best of who we are” – the group has now focused its businesses even more closely on the requirements of individual markets and aligned them to a greater degree with its customers’ needs. In its new structure, Covestro has organised the seven business entities in a setup based precisely on their individual success factors and integrated all operational activities throughout the value chain that are critical to success into these new entities.
The group now distinguishes the two segments — solutions and specialties and performance materials.
The solutions and specialties segment comprises six business entities — tailored urethanes, thermoplastic polyurethanes, coatings and adhesives, elastomers, engineering plastics, and specialty films. The focus here is on complex products with a high pace of innovation, which Covestro combines with application technology services.
The performance materials business entity forms a separate segment comprising the businesses with standard polycarbonates, standard urethane components and base chemicals. The focus here is on reliably delivering standard products at competitive market prices.
In the second chapter of the strategy – “Drive sustainable growth” – Covestro combines the consistent alignment of products and processes with its customers’ needs with an even sharper focus on addressing sustainability in a profitable way.
“We want to generate sustainable growth. That means we’ll also consistently align our investments and acquisitions to the two aspects of profitability and sustainability,” said Dr Thomas Toepfer, CFO, Covestro. “Due to the optimally allocated resources, our new structure now allows us even better to develop our portfolio in a targeted manner by investing in attractive and sustainable market segments. Our growth activities will be given an even sharper orientation.”
Covestro’s long-term vision is to be realised in the third strategic chapter: “Become fully circular.” As part of that, the group intends to accelerate transformation to a climate-neutral and resource-conserving economy.
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