Karen J. Huebscher
CEO,
Johannes Schranck
Leading Scientist Catalysis and Product Manager,
Solvias

As the global economy is affected by a period of new divergence and low-growth, chemical companies are particularly challenged to deliver profitable growth in a hypercompetitive environment. To elude this predicament, careful strategic adjustments are required. Even more so at high cost Western European locations, it becomes crucial to capture value over volume, improve performance and efficiency and to seek portfolio coherence.

In this context, catalysis plays a key role in gaining the economic as well as ecological advantages of modern sustainable chemistry. As the science of accelerating chemical processes, catalysis is of significant importance to industry as well as academia. Depending on the line of business, each euro invested into catalysis can generate added values between 100 and 400 euro. Consequently, catalysts are currently involved in more than 80% of all manufacturing processes in the chemical industry. This results in a persistent interest in the development of new catalysts and in applying them to novel synthetic methodologies. Especially in the area of fine chemicals, homogeneous catalysis has become an essential and powerful tool for synthetic organic ...