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WACKER’s Corporate Research Facility – the “Consortium”

The company’s nucleus and the heart of our corporate research activities

Corporate R&D’s laboratories are located at WACKER’s central research facility – the “Consortium für elektrochemische Industrie.” These labs offer the perfect environment in which to conduct research on new topics. Making what is good even better has been the motto since 1903 and the basis for many forward-looking innovations- after all, innovation shapes the future.

The Consortium’s research activities focus on highly promising markets, in other words, global megatrends. The chemical industry is expected to supply more than just chemicals. What the markets demand are functional materials with defined properties that will solve specific problems.

That’s why the Consortium no longer starts by developing new chemical substances and then trying to find applications for them. Instead, we take the exact opposite approach: we identify challenges that the market faces, extrapolate the property sets needed to meet those challenges, and then specifically develop new materials that draw upon our core competencies.

WACKER maintains an intense dialogue, and pursues fruitful collaborations, with the scientific community. We work with the Technical University of Munich (TUM), for instance, to maintain the WACKER Institute of Silicon Chemistry, which serves as an important source of ideas for our own research work. Intense collaboration between industry and academia is essential if Europe is to be competitive – A further advantage for having Europe as a center of research is that the continent’s established legal systems are designed to protect intellectual property.

Knowledge and education are our most important resources in Europe. Another benefit that Europe offers is its extensive network of excellent, globally respected universities and state-sponsored research institutions.

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From 1903 to the Present Day

Alexander Wacker established the “Consortium für elektrochemische Industrie” in Nuremberg for the purpose of recycling acetylene. He defined the company’s purpose as the pursuit of advances in (electro)chemistry to discover, expand and exploit (electro)chemical processes, as well as to sell chemical products.

In 1918, the Consortium moved from Nuremberg to Munich, where it still operates at the same address. It celebrated its centennial in 2003, when it hosted an international scientific symposium.

The history of Wacker Chemie AG began with systematic research, and systematic research remains an engine tirelessly driving the company’s success.

A current focus of the basic research carried out by the Consortium deals with the chemistry of low-valence silicon for medium-to-long-term use in industrial applications such as catalysis. Our R&D work on lithium-ion batteries aims at developing silicon-based high-capacitance anode materials. Another focus of research is on ESETEC®, our proprietary production system for biopharmaceuticals (biologics).

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Contact

Wacker Chemie AG

Consortium für elektrochemische Industrie
Zielstattstrasse 20
81379 München
Germany

Phone: +49 89 74844-0
Fax: +49 89 74844-350