Covestro Group at a Glance – Company Profile
Production Sites and R&D Facilities
Covestro operates production sites and research and development (R&D) facilities for various product groups throughout the world. The following chart shows the geographical distribution of Covestro’s 50 production sites and 10 R&D facilities in the EMLA, NA, and APAC regions.
Covestro’s production sites and R&D facilities
1 NA: North America region (Canada, Mexico, United States).
2 EMLA: Europe, Middle East, Latin America (excluding Mexico), Africa region.
3 APAC: Asia and Pacific region.
Large-capacity production facilities serve in particular to ensure that customers in the respective regions are supplied reliably and efficiently with the Performance Materials segment’s products. Additional plants in selected countries manufacture polyurethane precursors and products for the Solutions & Specialties segment. Moreover, we operate production plants in certain countries for customer-specific compounding of polycarbonate resins.
Thanks to the integration of upstream production stages (backward integration), e.g., in its own production of chlorine, Covestro has continually optimized the value chain. In addition, Covestro has put in place wide-ranging programs and initiatives to achieve and steadily improve performance in the areas of safety, costs, and plant availability.
We invest continuously in our global production network in order to maintain our production facilities and their infrastructure, to optimize manufacturing processes, and to expand capacities in line with market developments. To do so, Covestro relies on advanced and environmentally friendly production processes and continually optimizes its technologies. Key growth projects in the year 2021 included increasing the production capacity for specialties in the EMLA region and expanding compounding capacities in Krefeld-Uerdingen (Germany), Shanghai (China), and Guangzhou (China).
Covestro primarily conducts research and development at three major centers in Germany, the United States, and China. Additional centers in China, in Taiwan (Greater China), in the United States, and in the Netherlands were added with the acquisition of RFM. Customer-oriented applications are generally developed in the relevant regions, while global, fundamental research and technology development are mainly conducted in Germany. We also operate an R&D facility in Japan, which concentrates on the Japanese market. Our global presence allows us to respond to regional trends and customer requirements in the best possible ways.