Fit for the future: at the Krefeld-Uerdingen location, LANXESS is investing in a climate-protection project that simultaneously helps to ensure its competitiveness. Here the business unit Semi-Crystalline Products manufactures adipic acid, a precursor for fibers and synthetics made of polyamide as well as for polyester. The principal customers are the automotive and plastics industries. In 2009 the company will start up a new thermal reduction plant for nitrous oxide (LARA) at the site. This chemical, created as a byproduct during production, will be completely broken down and eliminated by the new facility.

LANXESS is breaking new ground with the financing of the plant. The specialty chemicals group has become one of the first companies in Germany to engage in a “joint implementation project,” an instrument of the emissions trade between industrialized countries provided for by the Kyoto Protocol. The arrangement makes ecologically-minded efforts worthwhile economically too. Through sales of the allocated emissions certificates, LANXESS can refinance its investment.

Reviewed by the German Technical Inspectorate and officially approved: in late April 2008, the appropriate German emissions-trading authority gave the green light to the LARA project. Compared to 2007, the new plant reduces nitrous oxide emissions by about 5,000 tons per year. That corresponds to a savings of about 1,500,000 tons of CO2 equivalent annually.