“Trust, fairness, and equality are central values for us as an employer. By publishing salary ranges in our job postings, we demonstrate that we live by these values, take the concerns of applicants seriously, and promote an open and fair dialogue,” says Sophie von Saldern, Global Head of Human Resources at ����AV. The company’s existing workforce also benefits from this transparency, as salary bands are accessible internally.

Benefits for All: Greater Efficiency, Transparency, and Fairness

This new approach goes beyond positioning ����AV as a transparent and fair employer – it fundamentally transforms the entire recruitment process. The initiative was initially piloted in engineering roles, where there is a significant skills shortage. The positive results from the pilot encouraged ����AV to extend the publication of salary ranges to all job advertisements.

“We’re already seeing early indications of increased application numbers. At the same time, the recruitment process is becoming more focused, and we’re receiving positive feedback from candidates. Applicants are assessing themselves within the salary range based on their qualifications and experience, which leads to more efficient and transparent discussions,” reports Dr. Ute Breitsohl, Head of Employer Branding & Recruiting in Germany.

Job seekers benefit from this transparency in several ways: Entry-level professionals gain clear guidance on salary expectations.
Experienced professionals can recognize the value placed on their expertise and directly discuss opportunities for development, including financial ones.
Women, who often undervalue themselves in salary negotiations, benefit from clear salary bands. For all profiles, the disclosure of salary structures allows applicants to immediately determine whether a position is financially attractive and suitable. “Our goal is to create a fair and open basis for discussion right from the start. In this way, we contribute even more to an application process at eye level,” explains Dr. Breitsohl. “The positive response from applicants confirms that our transparent approach creates trust. This enables us to focus more on development prospects and career goals in interviews.”

This initiative strengthens ����AV's position as an attractive employer. At the same time, ����AV is actively sending a signal to the labor market to raise awareness of the gender pay gap. “Only if salary ranges are disclosed transparently and comprehensibly can comparability be achieved across gender boundaries. With this step, ����AV is setting new standards for fairness and equality in the world of work,” Breitsohl continued.

Early Implementation of the EU Pay Transparency Directive

By publishing salary ranges in job postings, ����AV is preemptively fulfilling a requirement that will become mandatory for many companies in Germany by 2026. The forthcoming EU Pay Transparency Directive will oblige employers to disclose salary information during the recruitment process.

Sophie von Saldern, Global Head of Human Resources at ����AV, highlights the strategic intent behind this move: “We see publishing salary ranges not just as preparation for future legal requirements but as a strategic tool to strengthen our employer brand. The collective bargaining agreements in the chemical industry already provide attractive conditions—our additional transparency creates a win-win situation for applicants and our company.”

More targeted applications, positive feedback from departments, fewer time-consuming salary negotiations, and greater fairness: these indicators underline the success of this initiative and ����AV’s leadership role in promoting transparency and fair working conditions.

Interested candidates can find all current job postings with corresponding salary ranges on ����AV’s career page at www.career.covestro.com. The website also provides further information about ����AV as an employer and the diverse development opportunities within the company.

The Breakthrough Energy Catalyst foundation set up by Bill Gates and the European Investment Bank (EIB) are supporting this installation of the Rondo RHB100 heat battery, which is scheduled to begin operation at ����AV’s Brunsbüttel site at the end of 2026. The project will then produce ten percent of the steam required at the site, saving up to 13,000 tons of CO₂ emissions per year.

Rondo Heat Batteries combine century-old materials and cutting-edge automation to capture electricity and deliver high-temperature heat and power. Electrical energy is stored as heat, using bricks that have been used for heat storage at steel mills for centuries. The heat powers an ordinary boiler to deliver zero-emission steam. Renewable electricity can be intermittently stored when there is an excess available and a constant amount of steam can still be generated continuously.

"As an innovation company, we are always excited when we can further develop and test promising ideas that can bring us closer to our goals of a circular economy and climate-neutral production," says Dr. Thorsten Dreier, CTO of ����AV. “The heat battery is such an idea: a new technology that allows us to go one step further on our way to a sustainable future.”

“Rondo Heat Batteries deliver deep decarbonization by changing the fuel, not the factory,” said Eric Trusiewicz, CEO of Rondo Energy. “We’re honored to be working with ����AV to prove our safety, reliability, and efficiency under real conditions on a large scale over a long period of time. And we’re excited to be deploying in Brunsbüttel, where large flexible electricity loads are particularly valuable to the electricity grid.”

For ����AV, steam generation is an important part of the production process and accounts for a large proportion of energy consumption. The learnings from this first heat battery installation will provide experience and insights for ����AV to be able to assess whether larger-scale deployments are possible.

����AV started working in the field of continuous fiber-reinforced thermoplastic composites in 2015 with the acquisition of TCG Thermoplast Composite GmbH. Following the strategic decision to discontinue the Maezio^® product line after almost eight years, ����AV searched intensively for a buyer for the Markt Bibart site. As this attempt was ultimately not successful, ����AV decided to close the site later this year. Most recently, 48 of the approximately 7,600 employees in Germany were employed there. “We have initiated an extensive sales process, which, unfortunately, was not successful. Our focus on the ground is now on providing the best possible support to all colleagues. To this end, we will be working closely with the local employee representatives to find fair solutions for all those affected and to ensure that the closure process is socially responsible,” emphasizes Site Manager John Bauer.

A focus on core business

Thermoplastic fiber composites are a highly specialized and competitive niche business. ����AV has invested in building up the business since taking over the site in 2015 and has made very good technical progress in production. Nevertheless, the company has not succeed to scale business with sufficient success in the market. There are only a few synergies with the core business of the Engineering Plastics business entity and the vast majority of key account business. In addition, the typical customers for thermoplastic composites only order on the basis of joint, complex and time-consuming technical application development, and then only in very small quantities. This is in marked contrast to the far predominant distribution model and key account business in the ����AV Group.

����AV is thus sharpening its focus on its core Engineering Plastics business by discontinuing the Maezio^® products. Major customers in the automotive, electronics and healthcare divisions, among others, use these high-quality polycarbonates for further processing in a wide range of products.

Currently, two of its own ships and two additional chartered ships belong to Tailwind Shipping Lines. In addition to the non-food products from and for Lidl, Tailwind offers space on these ships also for interested companies. ����AV uses this now to also become more independent from the busy main routes and shipping companies and to increase the speed and punctuality of its own deliveries.

"Ocean shipments have been severely disrupted since the pandemic began, and the scheduling accuracy of large shipowners has fallen from 70 to 20 percent," says Sucheta Govil, Chief Commercial Officer at ����AV. "To increase our reliability and punctuality, we are therefore actively looking for alternatives. With Tailwind, we have found a partner to navigate the direct route from Asia to Europe with its ships - and who is therefore exactly where it helps us."

Smaller vessels, more flexibility and punctuality

The Tailwind ships have a capacity of around 5,000 "Twenty Foot Equivalent Units", or TEU, per month. TEU is a standard measure for shipping containers. Large ships from the big shipping companies can hold three to five times more. However, those mega ships can also only discharge at large ports and travel rather fixed routes with pre-determined stops, which increases the susceptibility to delays.

"We now determine the route ourselves. And because our ships are smaller, we can also have them sail to and discharge at smaller ports. This gives us a great advantage in terms of flexibility, speed and thus also punctuality," says Wolf Tiedemann, CEO of Sales, Logistics and Central Divisions of Lidl Stiftung & Co. KG. "This allows us to import our own goods reliably from Asia - but at the same time we still have room that we can offer. We are pleased to have found a first interested customer and partner with ����AV and hope to be able to expand the cooperation further and find other interested parties."

A first container of ����AV materials successfully completed the route from the company's largest production site near Shanghai to Europe. Currently ����AV ships a good 8,000 containers a year on that route alone. How many of these will be transported by Tailwind in the future is currently being negotiated.

����AV intends to base all the company’s operations on the principles of the circular economy and is pursuing the long-term goal of climate-neutral production. “Technological innovations in the area of process technology, in particular, are an important pillar of our strategy to achieve this goal,” says Dr. Klaus Schäfer, Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of ����AV. “AdiP is a technology we have worked on intensively in its development at multiple sites, and which once again underlines the innovative leadership of ����AV.”

“If we want to overcome the climate crisis as a society, we need ambitious and innovative impulses from the industrial sector. Innovative economic activity and climate protection are not opposites; nowadays, business and climate protection belong together. You can see this in the ����AV project presented to us today", says Minister Jan Philipp Albrecht.

More efficient and environmentally friendly than existing processes

AdiP stands for adiabatic-isothermal phosgenation, which describes the key feature of the technology: the reaction is controlled more efficiently and does not require an external heat supply, as the heat generated during the reaction process is used.

As a result, this innovative production process significantly reduces energy consumption and CO₂ emissions in MDI production. Thanks to AdiP technology up to 40% steam and 25% electricity can be saved per ton of MDI produced in an MDI plant – and CO₂ emissions are thus reduced by up to 35%.

Another advantage of the innovative method is that the production output increases by 50% compared to the technology currently in use. As a result, future MDI production plants based on AdiP technology can be smaller than in the past.

Pilot phase to bring long-term experience

“I am confident that the new technology will pass its practical test and become an important component of our growth strategy for MDI. At the same time, I expect AdiP to significantly improve the efficiency of our production processes,” says Daniel Meyer, head of the Polyurethanes unit at ����AV. The pilot phase should be completed in about 12 months’ time.

“I am proud of the fact that this innovative process has been implemented for the first time on a large scale at our Brunsbüttel site. And I am absolutely convinced that our employees will successfully commission the new technology and optimize it for future use in our global production network,” says Dr. Uwe Arndt, the Brunsbüttel site manager.

����AV is one of the world’s leading producers of MDI, a raw material much in demand for producing energy-efficient insulation solutions for buildings and refrigerating devices. In 2019, the global MDI market had a volume of around 7,500 kilotons and is expected to further grow in the long term. With the new technology, ����AV is making an important contribution to achieving the climate goals of its customer industries.