On December 10, 2007, Evonik Industries announced a new organizational structure for its chemicals business, Evonik Degussa GmbH. Under the restructuring, the business’s twelve current Chemical Business Units will be consolidated into six units.
• C4 Chemistry and Building Blocks will become Base Chemicals (headed by Dr Thomas Haeberle); • Aerosil & Silanes and Advanced Fillers & Pigments will become Inorganic Materials (headed by Thomas Hermann); • Care & Surface Specialties and Superabsorber will become Consumer Specialties (headed by Dr Claus Rettig); • Feed Additives and Exclusive Synthesis & Catalysts will become Health & Nutrition (headed by Dr Hubert Wennemer); • Coatings & Colorants and Specialty Acrylics will become Coatings & Additives (headed by Dr Hans-Peter Schaufler, to be succeeded by Dr Ulrich Küsthardt at a later point); • High Performance Polymers and Methacrylates will become Performance Polymers (headed by Gregor Hetzke).
A press release on the restructuring is here.
An overview of the Aerosil & Silanes business is here. An overview of the Advanced Fillers & Pigments business is here.
The new Inorganic Materials business unit will include the following products:
• From Advanced Fillers & Pigments: carbon black, precipitated silica, rubber silanes, matting agents, iron blue pigments, Inxel pigment preparations;
• From Aerosil & Silanes: fumed silica (Aerosil), functional silanes, chlorine silanes, and Degussa Advanced Nanomaterials (nano-structured materials such as zinc oxide, indium zinc oxide and ceroxide).
The restructuring makes sense in that it brings together rubber silanes and functional silanes into the same business unit. Similarly, the new structure brings together precipitated silica and fumed silica, which share some applications.