Everyone’s looking toward Asia now. Long gone are the days when cheap manufactured goods were the only things coming out of India and China, the world’s two most populous countries. The until recently staggering economic growth of the two nations was increasingly being powered by high-tech and cutting-edge industries. Greater involvement in the Asian market is therefore one of the key strategic objectives of the German specialty chemicals group LANXESS. As company CEO Dr. Axel C. Heitmann explains, India has a crucial role to play: “Beside China, India is our most important growth market in Asia. We intend to fully capitalize on this growth potential by means of targeted investment.”

With this objective in mind, in 2008 the specialty chemicals group began to turn Jhagadia, an industrial site in northwest India, into the largest LANXESS location in the country. The project includes not only relocation of rubber chemicals production from Thane, further south, but also construction of a new plant for production of ion exchange resins. The company will invest approximately €50 million on the site expansion. The two production facilities are scheduled to begin operation in 2010, creating around 250 new jobs.