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 | Boosted by cooperation |
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- Wind energy stimulates growth for LEUNA and BASF
- Increasing demand for epoxy resins from LEUNA
- LEUNA-Harze guarantees BASF's supply of resin raw materials for fiber-reinforced composites
Epoxy resins are on a growth course around the world. And the epoxy resin manufacturer LEUNA-Harze in the Halle-Leipzig chemical triangle, in the center of Germany, is growing just as fast. For the Leuna-based company, the key to success is its combination of experience, customer focus and innovativeness. Supplying high-grade intermediates and expertise, BASF has for years contributed to this success. Now the two companies have signed a cooperation agreement. A story of success based on excellent cooperation.
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| Klaus Paur, principal shareholder of LEUNA-Harze, talking to Bernhard Mohr from BASF Sales. |
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At the age of 45, Klaus Paur, an entrepreneur from Augsburg in Bavaria decided to launch a new venture. Just before the iron curtain parted, he toured various chemical production sites in the region that was later to be become the new German Länder (states), looking for a new challenge. The company known as “Leuna Kombinat Walter Ulbricht” struck him as a particularly positive example. “The executives had planned a ‘management buy-in,’ which clearly demonstrated how fervently they believed in their company that had been growing for years. I liked that,” says Paur, now the “Managing Partner” according to his business card. The executive team of four and Paur soon gathered around a table and came to an agreement shortly afterwards: the five old management hands decided to join forces, maintain the Leuna resin company with its long tradition and steer it to success. Many tasks had to be accomplished until the state-owned company was privatized in October 1995, and the conditions were harsh by all counts. “For all our phone calls we had to use those mobile phones that were as heavy as brick,” Paur recalls, “and I put up a bed here in the office. Some other renowned companies who had shown some interest at first were getting cold feet in these conditions, but I wasn’t frightened off easily. This was our chance, we believed in rebuilding the business.”
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Girl power at LEUNA-Harze: lab assistants Kerstin Selonke (left) and Stefanie Karnei (right) with trainee Lisa Rolle. |
The medium-sized company, which currently employs 150 with 40 percent of them women, a high share by industry standards, and boasts a trainee rate above 10 percent, today belongs to the top-ranking epoxy resin manufacturers in Europe. “We are certainly the epoxy supplier with the most wide-ranging production portfolio in Europe,” adds Hans-Dietrich Wendt, graduate chemist and 38-year company veteran now in charge of marketing at LEUNA-Harze. The key to success is the company’s clear orientation on its customers’ needs: “We’re really good at making specialty products in volumes of 400 to 500 tons,” Wendt says, “and we meet specific requirements by formulating a wide range of customized modifications.” LEUNA-Harze operates six independent production lines, each of which can be used to manufacture a high share of specialty products even at short notice. Paur cannot deny his pride: “If someone finds out Friday at lunch time that he’ll be needing a specific product on Monday, he’ll get it from us. Nobody can match us at that.”
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| Dr. Wolfhart Seidel, managing director of LEUNA-Harze. |
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This unparalleled focus on customer needs ensures LEUNA-Harze is enjoying lasting growth: after setting up two new facilities already in 1998 and 2003, the company brought on stream its third epoxy resin plant in May 2007, nearly doubling its epoxy resin capacity to 40,000 tons. The plant was actually started up four weeks ahead of schedule, another feat that demonstrates more than 50 years of resin experience. Managing Director Dr. Wolfhart Seidel, a chemist who has been with LEUNA-Harze for 36 years, says: “We spent 120 million euros on this site in the past twelve years, and thanks to our current capacity expansion we will break the sales threshold of 100 million euros before the year is out.”
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Versatile epoxy resins open up new fields of application
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Quality makes the difference: LEUNA lab assistant Elke Roschkowski assessing a test specimen in the application lab. |
Epoxy resins are increasingly replacing other materials because components made of these resins have superior mechanical properties. This is an important point mainly for wind turbine manufacturers. As these plants are becoming more powerful, they need increasingly large rotor blades – blade lengths exceeding 50 meters are not uncommon at all these days. To ensure that the blades will resist the severe strains of wind and weathering exposure, they must be made from materials that perform to ever stricter standards. For example, from epoxy resins reinforced with glass fibers.
However, the versatile resins get their growth impetus from many other fields of use, too. They are used to make automobile leaf springs as well as hulls for sport boats. Modern passenger aircraft contain tons of components made from epoxy resins, parts that add to the weight of the aircraft only a fraction of what metal components would add. In construction, the resins are valuable components in industrial floor coatings and building adhesives. You find them in many homes in the form of two-component adhesives, and they provide reliable protection against corrosion when used as a binder in coatings. “This type of corrosion-proof coating adheres superbly to metal substrates and offers excellent weather resistance,” says marketing manager Wendt, “In pipeline coating there is simply no match for epoxy-based systems.”
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LEUNA-Harze: Comprehensive product portfolio
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| Dr. Holger Henning, development and application engineering manager at LEUNA Harze. |
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As a prerequisite for formulating all these different specialties, LEUNA-Harze manufactures about 200 different products. Essential items in the product range are liquid resins based on bisphenol A and F as well as the appropriate reactive diluents. For all of these products, the company has unique selling propositions. “We are one of the very few worldwide who manufacture bisphenol F resins,” Seidel reports and adds: “And fewer still are able to combine bisphenol A and F.” Mixing these two resins keeps them capable of flowing readily, so they are easier to process because they do not crystallize as easily. “It’s the same as with honey,” Seidel offers a comparison. “Once honey has crystallized, you need to heat it to make it flow on your slice of bread.” At the building site, this would entail the extra effort of setting up a heating chamber – and the high cost associated with it.
LEUNA-Harze is one of the major manufacturers of reactive diluents, which are essential in the production of epoxy resins. Not only do they thin the resin, so that it can be processed, they also slow down excessively fast reactions, and they are integrated into the resin molecule network by reaction. So they remain part of the finished product, ensuring for example defined levels of flexibility and surface tension. Reactive diluents allow substances like sand or chalk to be used as extenders in epoxy systems. This will for example make floor coatings resist better to mechanical strains. “You need a lot of expertise to select the right reactive diluent and use it right in processing, and we know how to do that,” Seidel says. “Apart from that we have all types of reactive diluent in our product portfolio.” The new production facility for these products is the best evidence of success. Since it came on stream a few months ago, the company has doubled its annual reactive diluent capacity, to more than 7,000 metric tons.
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With BASF from adhesives to corrosion protection
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All spick and span: LEUNA-Harze production halls. |
LEUNA-Harze and BASF originally cooperated on adhesives: many years ago, the Ludwigshafen company supplied a certain amine curing agent to Leuna for the production of adhesives. Apparently, the adhesive properties were fine in more than one respect, for the two companies stuck together and soon started to develop new applications jointly. Seidel recalls: “Our meetings with staff from the former BASF Lacke + Farben AG company now known as BASF Coatings definitely made history. The company was trying to qualify as a CED supplier.” CED coatings, which is short for “cathodic electrodeposition” coatings, protect automobile bodies reliably against corrosion. The appropriate resin is vital to this protective function. “That was certainly a tricky task, but we managed to solve it. Other resin manufacturers didn’t,” Seidel remembers.
Innovations are still essential to their cooperation with BASF. LEUNA’s boss Paur says: “We cooperate intensively on new developments. At present we are driving a number of development projects forward together with BASF.” BASF, too, is rather pleased with the Leuna people’s delight in innovation: “LEUNA-Harze is always open-minded for all things new, so we like to suggest new intermediates to this customer,” declares Bernhard Mohr, the account manager in charge of LEUNA at BASF’s Intermediates division, and adds: “The LEUNA experts in turn try to find new applications for our existing intermediates in their formulations.” Mohr sees this as an extremely fruitful and constructive cooperation, not least because the agreed targets are accomplished fast.
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Cooperation: Sharing continuing growthBASF SE and LEUNA-Harze GmbH, Leuna, are now cooperating on the supply in Europe of raw materials for BASF's epoxy systems for fiber-reinforced composites. The two companies signed a declaration of intent to this effect in early April 2008. "Our cooperation with LEUNA-Harze is a major element in our strategy to safeguard the long-term supply of all essential raw materials for our customers," said Dr. Gregor Daun, who heads the Epoxy System Development and Marketing unit in BASF's Intermediates division, and added: "With our newly developed epoxy systems, which Germanischer Lloyd has approved for the production of wind turbine blades, we offer innovative solutions for our customers." Klaus Paur, principal shareholder of LEUNA-Harze, said: "We pursue a policy of outpacing growth in the epoxy resin market by means of specialties like bisphenol F resin and reactive diluents. Consequently we have doubled our capacity in these two fields. The new plants, which represent an investment volume of 25 million euros, will come on stream in April. The cooperation with BASF that we have developed for years gives us another opportunity to establish our products in a fast-expanding market segment."
The day-to-day dealings are harmonious too: "BASF responds flexibly to our wishes," Paur stresses. For example, until a few years ago LEUNA needed the intermediate hexanediol to be delivered at exactly the right hour. Paur: "It always worked out perfectly, hats off to BASF's logistics." In Paur's view, the company's open way of communicating is definitely another asset: "If a product is running short, they will tell us well in advance and so allow us to adapt flexibly to that situation. Regrettably not all our suppliers behave in the same way, so this attitude really needs to be commended." Apart from the reactive diluent raw materials, BASF now also supplies various Baxxodur™ branded amine-based curing agents, accelerators and additives for professional epoxy resin processing.
At the age of 61, the thought of retiring soon has not even remotely occurred to the enterprising Paur. Too bright are the prospects of his company, too excellent is the team in which he works, too interesting is his job, which he has cut out for himself. When some time ago a friend advised him that, after all these years, he "should treat himself to something nice" - the friend was thinking about a sleek product from a South German sports car manufactory - Paur just smiled his infectious smile. "I decided to get a new mixing machine," he remembers whimsically. As his gaze wanders outside and lingers on the brand-new reactive-diluent plant, he clearly gives the impression that he is already thinking about his next project.
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