Evonik Industries has invested an additional €500m in innovation in a bid to boost sales.
Klaus Engel, Chairman of Evonik’s Executive Board, explained: “Our innovation campaign is bearing fruit. The constant flow of new products, applications and business models is a major driver of profitable growth at Evonik. Innovations are to make an even larger contribution to sales and profit going forward.”
Currently, products and applications developed within the past five years make up around 10% of sales at Evonik. The company hopes that this will increase to 16%, with innovation focused on growing sectors, including cosmetics, healthcare and nutrition. Ulrich Küsthardt said: “It’s an ambitious goal and we have taken additional steps in order to meet it.”
Evonik has streamlined its innovation portfolio to include larger projects and medium to long-term goals. The company hopes this will allow it to make more efficient use of resources and foster entrepreneurship and fresh ideas.
In addition to the investment, Evonik has also redefined growth fields and has renewed focus on its innovation portfolio. Küsthardt added: “We have a total of six growth fields, which we expect to contribute more than €1bn in additional sales by the year 2025.”
Küsthardt added: “We want to become one of the most innovative companies in the world.” In an independent study, almost 50% of customers, employees and investors said that they expected Evonik to meet these ambitious goals. More than 75% of those asked also said that they felt Evonik was an “innovative” company.