Evonik: A focus on Asia

By F.E. OLIMPO

In November 2014, the company inaugurated the new methionine plant in Singapore. Costing US$625 million, it is the most Evonik has ever invested in a single chemical project.

Asia-Pacific is the current focus of the company''s attention, says Evonik Chief Executive Officer Dr. Klaus Engel. It is a leading growth area and the fastest-growing methionine market in the world, he adds. In the last two years, it got the lion''s share of all Evonik investments- about US$1 billion- out of the more than US$2.6 billion the company had invested around the world.

As a global brand, Evonik is known as a specialty chemicals company with a broad range of products that includes adhesives and sealants, raw materials for the coatings industry, structural foams and special plastics for the automotive industry, building protection products, etc.

Committed to animal nutrition is its Health & Nutrition Business Unit, which produces and markets essential amino acids. Evonik in fact is the only company in the world that produces all four key amino acids for animal nutrition: methionine, lysine, threonine and tryptophan.

Amino acids are used as building blocks in the synthesis of animal protein, such as in nutrition tailored to the needs of poultry. With amino acids, livestock needs less feed and their excretion of nitrogen and other undigested nutrients is reduced, in a way improving the carbon footprint of livestock farming.

DL-methionine market leader

Evonik is the recognised market leader in DL-methionine, capable of producing 580,000 tonnes a year from its four sites around the world. These facilities are in Singapore, Mobile in Alabama (USA), Antwerp in Belgium, and Wessiling in Germany. The product is being marketed worldwide using the MetAMINO^® brand.

The choice of Singapore as site for its biggest methionine facility had some in the industry wondering. The city state is a financial hub and has hardly any feed and livestock industry to speak of, unlike its agricultural neighbours like Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia and the Philippines, which have thriving animal production industries.

But Evonik isn''t a stickler to established ideas. "We leave the beaten path and win over new markets with groundbreaking ideas," Dr. Engel says.

In his speech at the opening of the Singapore plant, Mr. Peter Meinshausen, Evonik''s regional president for Southeast Asia, Australia and New Zealand, cited the city-state''s "ideal geographic location, modern infrastructure, and business-friendly and stable environment" as the simple answer.

From here, according to Dr. Reiner Beste, President Business Unit Health & Nutrition, "shipment times from plant to market, be it to China, to New Zealand, to India or to Japan, will be drastically reduced."

While these factors helped in the decision of choosing Singapore, there was another point to be considered. In 2013, the company opened in Singapore its first analytical centre for animal feed in South Asia, similar to the ones it has in Hanau, Germany, and Beijing in China.

Dr. Alfred Petri, senior vice president for sales and marketing of Evonik''s Health and Nutrition Business Unit, says the analytical centre in Singapore was set up "to better support our customers in this important region." Manned by 20 nutritionists, chemists, and engineers, it provides value-added technical services to the animal feed industry.

"Like its German and Chinese counterparts, the Singapore centre provides a full range of amino acid analytical services to regional and global feed manufacturers to help them maximise the nutritional value of their feed," Dr. Petri explains.

The range of services the analytical centre provides includes wet chemistry analysis of amino acid content in raw materials, compound feed, premixes and physiological samples, wet chemistry analysis of supplemented amino acids, and near infrared reflectance spectroscopy analytical services for prediction of amino acid content in raw materials.

In addition to providing nutrient analysis of feed and feed ingredients, the analytical centre also offers feed manufacturers the opportunity to be trained in amino acid analytics and to learn how to best apply this knowledge in feed production for more consistent, high-quality feed leading to improved animal production, better sustainability, and increased profitability.

It also "allows us to provide our customers with the most up-to-date training on analytical methods as well as the most accurate analytical information available about the nutrient quality of their feeds and feed ingredients," says Dr. Girish Channarayapatna, the unit''s director of nutrition and technical sales for Asia South.

With customers having easy access to amino acid supplies, it makes it easier for the centre''s nutritionists, scientists and chemical engineers to do their job more effectively.