CDP Again Awards an “A” Rating to LANXESS’ Efforts on Climate Protection

• Group among the top 2 percent of all companies assessed
• Included in CDP climate A List for the sixth time

Specialty chemicals company LANXESS has once again been recognized for its achievements in the fight against climate change. In the latest assessment by the renowned climate protection initiative CDP, the Group has once again made it to the climate A List as one of 283 companies worldwide. This puts LANXESS among the top 2 percent of the nearly 15,000 companies scored by CDP.

The “A” rating is awarded to companies that report particularly transparently and comprehensively on their climate protection activities and also implement corresponding projects. LANXESS is on the A List for the sixth time this year. The Group has been disclosing climate protection-related data to CDP since 2012.

“Customers, investors and many other stakeholders are paying increasing attention to the sustainability of LANXESS’ operations. And climate protection is right at the top of the agenda. Being once again on the CDP A List shows that we are doing a lot in this area and, most importantly, achieving a lot,” said Hubert Fink, member of
the Board of Management of LANXESS AG.

Multiple awards

The renewed inclusion in CDP’s climate A List follows several positive assessments in sustainability rankings this year. Just a few days ago, LANXESS was again included in the Dow Jones Sustainability Indices (DJSI) World and Europe. As last year, the specialty chemicals company leads the DJSI Europe in the “Chemicals” category and came in second in the DJSI World. In November, MSCI ESG confirmed LANXESS’ AA rating. LANXESS is thus among the global top 3 diversified chemical companies. In

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addition, EcoVadis confirmed LANXESS’ Platinum level in its sustainability rating in July. The award is given to the top 1 percent of the 75,000 companies analyzed by EcoVadis.

CDP: Highest transparency on environmental data

The independent non-profit organization CDP aims to create transparency worldwide on greenhouse gas emissions and the use of water resources and forests. In 2022, more than 18,700 companies submitted their data. This makes the CDP data platform one of the world’s most comprehensive sources of environmentally relevant information. The project is currently supported by more than 680 investors worldwide, who manage a total of around 130 trillion US dollars in assets.

www.lanxess.com

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Covestro Awarded for Transparency on Climate Protection Measures

• Group again receives excellent CDP “A-” rating
• Ranking confirms strong climate strategy and transparency
• Top score achieved in four categories

Covestro has again been awarded an „A-” rating in this year’s climate protection ranking by the Climate Disclosure Project (CDP). This underpins Covestro’s climate protection efforts and maintains its position among the leading companies in this segment. After already achieving very good results last year, Covestro participated in the survey again this year and con-vinced with its complete focus on the circular economy.

“We were able to maintain our A- rating in our second participation. A great result that we are proud of,” says Dr. Markus Steilemann, CEO of Covestro. “The rating shows us that we are on the right track in driving climate protection forward and that it is important to report transparently on our progress. Our ambitious climate targets underpin our claim. One thing, however, must be clear: climate protection must be viewed in terms of society as a whole. Only if we all contribute, we can achieve the Paris climate goals in the long term.”

Top grade A in four categories

Covestro received the highest possible grade A in four out of ten categories, “Business Strategy Financial Planning & Scenario Analysis”, “Scope 1 & 2 emissions (incl. Verification)”, “Governance” and “Opportunity Disclosure”. Overall, the company achieved the grade A- and is thus in the leadership range. This means that Covestro is one of 24 percent of companies in the chemical industry peer group that received such a good rating and is rated higher than the average for this group, which is B-. The assessment is based on a scale from A to D-. The highest grade is awarded to companies that demonstrate a high degree of transparency in connection with actual climate protection performance. The CDP ranking is considered one of the world’s most renowned for environmental reporting and environmental management by companies. A total of almost 15,000 companies took part in this year’s rating.

“Sustainability is not a nice add-on but a business crucial strategy. The interest on sustainability and how to become fully circular is high, not only amongst investors, but also among many other stakeholder groups, such as employees, customers and policy-makers.,” explains Lynette Chung, Chief Sustainability Officer of Covestro. “Ratings provide guidance and assess-ment here. With our climate targets, we show that we are a pioneer in our industry. Our efforts in these areas have already been positively recognized in the CDP ranking and confirm our ambitions.”

Circular economy essential in corporate strategy

Despite the various challenges Covestro faced in 2022, the Group succeeded in advancing the circular economy, focusing on climate neutrality and implementing sustainable solutions. A key component of the company’s “Sustainable Future” strategy is its focus on the circular economy. In March this year, Covestro announced its ambitious climate targets: Net-zero emissions for scope 1 and scope 2 by 2035.

As a pioneer on the path to a circular economy, Covestro is constantly working on new solutions in the areas of alternative raw materials and innovative recycling, is focusing on renewable energies and is strengthening, seeking and expanding partnerships. For example, Covestro is focusing on white biotechnology and this year opened a new research laboratory that aims to promote recycling processes based on enzymes and microorganisms. The new research group “NEncy” is also working on recycling old products and plastic waste through enzymatic recycling.

To make production processes and sites even more sustainable, Covestro already has wind energy supply agreements with suppliers Ørsted and ENGIE and is concluding further renewable energy purchase agreements. The recent multi-year agreement with CGN in China, dated December 2022, provides for the annual purchase of 300 gigawatt hours of wind and solar power. This means that 30 percent of the electricity required at Covestro’s Shanghai site will be covered by renewable energy.

At the same time, Covestro is continuously expanding its sustainable product portfolio and thus is also helping its customers to reduce their carbon footprint in production in the long term. To make it even easier for customers to recognise how sustainable a specific product is in the future, the “CQ” concept has been established. “CQ” is derived from Circular Intelli-gence. The core idea is to label Covestro products where the alternative raw material base is at least 25 percent. By using alternative energy sources and unique chemical recycling technologies, Covestro is demonstrating its CQ and is driving industry change.

www.covestro.com

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Perstorp Set to Save More Than One Billion Litres of Fresh Water Yearly at Stenungsund Plant

Sustainable solutions provider Perstorp is investing in a unique project that will allow it to use wastewater from a nearby municipal treatment plant for production operations in Stenungsund, Sweden. This will save 1.1 billion litres of fresh water per year.

The project will enable Perstorp to secure the future supply of water for the Stenungsund plant. It also fits with the company’s long term sustainability ambition to become Finite Material Neutral.

“This is an important development of core technology for Perstorp,” says Anna Berggren, Vice President Sustainability. “We plan to implement it at more sites around the world in the future in our drive to reduce freshwater consumption. Fresh water scarcity is already a fact around the world. The chemical industry has a responsibility to reduce its use and find new solutions that can also support society as a whole.”

All Perstorp production plants use water for multiple purposes: as a solvent for chemical reactions, a carrier for products, a heat-transfer medium, and for cooling, for example. One way of reducing consumption of fresh water is to purify and recycle wastewater. The Stenungsund project will enable wastewater from the water treatment plant run by the municipality to be further purified and reused at the Perstorp Oxo production plant.

The recycled water will also be used for production of renewable hydrogen via electrolysis for Perstorp’s game changing transition project Air, as well as for other strategic investments. “This project is a key enabler to combining business growth and sustainable development,” says Berggren.

Project Air is an initiative to transform the chemical industry towards climate neutrality. Perstorp Group and partner Uniper will produce sustainable methanol for chemical manufacturing using circular production methods, reducing carbon dioxide emissions by about 500,000 tonnes per year. This is equal to the annual emissions of around 340,000 new cars running on fossil fuel.

Andreas Utbult, Global Technology & Investment, adds: “This exciting water treatment and recycling project will involve close collaboration with several partners in the Stenungsund region. It exemplifies how Perstorp uses its technology expertise to transfer a sustainability vision into concrete investments.”

Learn more at www.perstorp.com

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DEHN Moves to Digital Platemaking With New ThermoFlexX Imager

The German electrical engineering company has digitalized the imaging process with the installation of an XSYS ThermoFlexX 30 for the production of pad printing plates. The conversion from analogue to digital has drastically reduced the throughput time and increased consistency and quality thanks to the highly innovative technical characteristics of the new solution.

Accelerating production with digital imaging

DEHN is a global specialist in the fields of surge and lightning protection as well as safety equipment. In production, the company works with many types of printing technologies including inkjet, laser, direct thermal and pad printing to make components for a wide variety of devices and systems. Having in-house printing facilities not only speeds up production and controls cost, it improves supply chain traceability and facilitates the implementation of product design changes very quickly.

Until recently, the company relied on time-consuming analogue photopolymer plates for their pad printing operation. This involved a number of manual steps, including positioning the print image by hand, while the plate imaging was performed with traditional tube exposure.

“The analogue process we had in place before was a real bottleneck in our workflow,” said Willibald Fink, Head of Special Projects at DEHN SE. “It involved getting the artwork created externally, before making the plate in-house using mechanical processes and exposures. Altogether, this took about a week. In addition, the in-house processing tied-up the platemaking for as long as an hour.”

Wanting to streamline and optimize the workflow while removing the risk of human error, DEHN decided it was time to go digital and invest in an imager that would allow them to improve the print resolution and quality, whilst also reducing waste of plate materials and energy consumption for improved sustainability and lower costs. Once DEHN was convinced of the high accuracy of the laser and the speed at which plates could be produced, they placed an order with XSYS for a ThermoFlexX30.

“We are known for our consistently high product quality but that doesn’t stop us from striving to improve further with innovative and future-oriented logistics and production technologies combined with modern ergonomics. As we move to digital platemaking, choosing the ThermoFlexX imager is a small but very important piece of the puzzle that will help DEHN be even more successful,” added Harald Daffner, Head of SPD assembly at DEHN SE.

Finding the optimal solution

The ThermoFlexX 30 Imager from XSYS is designed for the imaging of photopolymer plates for flexographic and letterpress printing as well as direct engraving of pad printing plates as part of a digital workflow. At DEHN, the imager is used with the XSYS nyloprint DLE S 30 pad printing plates – a combination of best-in-class technologies that offers superior printing quality at a resolution of up to 5080 dpi.

The ThermoFlexX imager operates a fibre laser with the option of simultaneously imaging multiple plates at different resolutions which significantly lowers waste and increases efficiency. To handle the steel-backed nyloprint plates, the device has been fitted with the hybrid drum option and customized register pins. “The conversion from analogue to digital processes has not only reduced the throughput time to about 10 minutes (from digital template to imaged plate), but the repeatability is also much higher; in part thanks to the register pins incorporated on the drum which correspond precisely to the holes in the plate,” said Harald Daffner. All in all, the new device contributes to process optimization and, as a result, to better product availability and increased sustainability.

Full satisfaction and great support

Although the partnership with XSYS was only established very recently with the purchase of the new imager, this addition to the platemaking department has certainly impressed the team at DEHN.

Furthermore, the comprehensive service and support offered by XSYS facilitated a smoother set up phase allowing DEHN to progress rapidly with the switchover to digital.

“We received good on-site support and the overall cooperation with XSYS has been excellent” concluded Harald Daffner.

www.xsysglobal.com

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