Dr Matthias L. Wolfgruber, Chairman of the Management Board of ALTANA AG and Frank Bannert, district administrator of the Saalekreis region, visited BYK Kometra in Schkopau today. September 28, for the opening ceremony of the new production building. Along with another 100 or so guests, they acquainted themselves with the ultramodern mixer line for the production of plastic modifiers and, together with Dr Uwe Zakrzewski and Klaus Dieter Besser, brought the first of six planned mixing reactors into service.
Based in the federal state of Saxony-Anhalt, BYK Kometra produces special surface-active copolymers, which are used in many applications as adhesion promoters and impact modifiers. These plastic modifiers create the conditions for processing normally incompatible materials and are used in a large number of technical applications, such as in the automotive industry. That an enormous level of specialist knowledge characterises the production process was self-evident to the Chairman of the Management Board of ALTANA AG, Dr. Matthias L. Wolfgruber, on his tour through the modern production rooms. Klaus Dieter Besser, Managing Director BYK Kometra, explained the various processes at work.
The new production building, which cost in the region of 7 million euros, was only completed several days ago. It had become a necessity in order to satisfy the ever-increasing global demand for high-performance plastic modifiers. "We are delighted,” says Dr Uwe Zakrzewski, Managing Director Marketing and Sales at BYK Additives & Instruments, "that this new production building here at the Schkopau site enables us, on the one hand, to send a positive signal on behalf of not only the people employed here but also the Saalekreis region as a whole and, on the other, to expand our production capacities of plastic modifiers by approx. 50%.”
