Letter from the Management Board 3
In January, we announced our ambitious goal of becoming climate neutral by 2025. We
began consistently implementing this plan in 2020, creating the first facts in line with
the goals of the UN Global Compact initiative for responsible and sustainable corporate
governance. Already in March, we switched our entire electricity procurement world-
wide to renewable energies. In the summer, the independent rating company EcoVadis
honored our commitment to sustainability, awarding ALTANA gold status for the
second time.
Our great financial strength enabled us to continue to make targeted investments in innovation
in 2020, including in the future digital printing market. ALTANA’s internal
startup ACTEGA Metal Print, for example, was able to get its first beta customers and a
distribution partner for a new type of technology that achieves decorative metallic
effects with considerably less material, costs, and production time than the processes com-
monly used to date. Overall, research and development expenditures in the ALTANA
Group remained with eight percent of sales at a high level.
We also successfully continued our strategy of growing by means of acquisitions. In
February, ACTEGA completed the acquisition of Swiss Schmid Rhyner AG, a specialist in
overprint varnishes for the packaging and printing industries. In the course of the year,
ECKART agreed to purchase the business of not one but two companies. With the internationally
leading TLS Technik GmbH & Co. Spezialpulver KG and the British specialist
AMT, we are expanding our portfolio in industrial, metal-based 3D printing. This will enable
ECKART to offer its customers even more high-performance materials in the future.
The fact that we were able to maintain customer proximity even in 2020 is reflected by
our business results. But it also shows how deeply ALTANA’s innovative solutions are
anchored in the daily lives of many people. Whether at the supermarket, doing sports, at
home, or while traveling, almost everywhere the knowhow of our researchers and
developers contributes to making people’s day-to-day lives more pleasant, safer, and more
sustainable. In the magazine section of this report, you can find out more about where
you encounter ALTANA repeatedly, even in your private life.