Remain a key player and raise new potentials

What do you think are the right answers? And what opportunities do you see in this for POLYTEC?​​​​​​​

To answer these questions, we have already developed a comprehensive sales and development strategy in 2020. This contains, that the targeted guidance of technological developments and an increased focus on sustainability enable us not only to remain a key player in our product segments, but also to raise new potential.

In the future, we will strengthen our material, design and engineering expertise in hybrid structural components, for example. This helps us to replace metal parts in vehicle structures with intelligent plastic solutions while guaranteeing functional integration, lightweight construction, and cost efficiency. In doing so, we strive for sustainable manufacturing with lower CO₂ emissions in the production of the components.

At the same time, we expect growth in the area of the "electric future". Because the expansion of battery-powered vehicles is now beyond question. Obviously, this has an impact on existing products in the Powertrain Solutions Product Line, but also creates great potential, especially with regard to the advancing battery development. For example, we are intensively involved in the development of complete high-voltage battery housings. Our technological diversity, coupled with our innovative spirit and production know-how, creates holistic solutions from a single source: SMC is an ideal fire protection material, injection moulding enables functional integration, polyurethane absorbers can attenuate punctual power peaks and ensure better temperature control of the batteries. And D-LFT in combination with UD tapes and injection moulding create underbody solutions with extremely high flexural and structural strength.

And last but not least, we are also boosting our non-automotive applications within the Smart Plastic Applications Product Line. Here we are increasingly concentrating on transferring our process and technology expertise from the automotive world to the energy market, logistics and various special topics such as e-bikes.

You also mentioned an increased focus on sustainability. What do you mean by this?​​​​​​​

Environmental protection and CO₂ reduction are not only social megatrends but are also demanded by our customers and investors with more stringent specifications. Sustainability largely determines our production processes with various recycling concepts, heat recovery systems and investments in renewable energy sources, such as most recently at the Hörsching plant (Note: see news article "The sun is rising! POLYTEC invests in photovoltaics"), and our product portfolio. Systematic functional integration reduces the number of components and in turn material consumption, production effort and weight. Furthermore, our lightweight products contribute millions of times to making mobility worldwide more efficient and thus more environmentally friendly. These multifaceted initiatives will enable us to meet growing demands and offer targeted added value in new business areas.