Just one look at the skyline of the pulsating Polish capital makes it clear: this is a significant center of the European automobile industry!  The tall buildings are emblazoned with advertisements for all well-known automobile and tire manufacturers and this is why LANXESS invited around 100 representatives of the Polish automobile industry to this very place, to Warsaw, in order to present innovative products and technological solutions. Find all the presentations  of the conference here.

The two-day conference, to which many experts from the different LANXESS business units had travelled, was held under the motto: “Development and Innovation for Modern Mobility” and thus, amongst others, current developments such as e-mobility, the lightweight construction of vehicles and green tires were discussed.

Flemming B Bjørnslev, LANXESS country representative for Central and Eastern Europe, opened the “Automotive Days Poland” on the morning of 27 October 2011, and welcomed the guests: “I am very pleased that we have the opportunity at this event to present our portfolio to our current and future customers.  We are already addressing the challenges of the mobility of tomorrow quite actively today and would like to work together closely with our customers to find future-oriented solutions.”  Poland is a very promising market – many large automobile manufacturers have after all moved their production plants here.  In addition to Volkswagen, Fiat and Opel also have production plants here in Poland – MAN is also building trucks and other transport vehicles here.

At the conclusion of Bjørnslev’s welcome speech, guest speaker Wojciech Drzewiecki, head of the well-known Samar institute, gave an overview of the Polish automotive industry: “Poland lies in sixth position in the rankings for European automobile manufacture – and is bound to improve on this position in the next few years.”  Magdalena Miranda, Head of Procurement Volkswagen Poznan and Piotr Musielak, Local Content Volkswagen Poznan, listed their criteria for selecting suppliers and introduced their organization.
In the afternoon the conference participants divided into two groups for the “HighTech Plastics” session and for the one on “High Performance Rubber.”  Amongst other subjects, here the applications for synthetics within the framework of e-mobility were a much discussed topic as well as the question of how a considerable amount of weight can be saved through replacing metal with high-tech LANXESS synthetics, which has positive effects ON fuel consumption.  “Only a few years ago the proportion of synthetics in vehicles was about 7 percent – in the meantime this has risen to a substantial 20 percent,” according to Lars Kraus of the Semi-Crystalline Products business unit.

Hans-Joachim Matthies, the leader of Marketing EMEA at the Performance Butadiene Rubbers business unit introduced the LANXESS high performance rubbers and stated:  “The rolling resistance in tires is responsible for about 20 to 30 percent of the gasoline consumption.  And, particularly in the area of electro mobility, it is of the greatest importance to reduce this rolling resistance.  This is possible with the innovative rubbers manufactured by LANXESS for the tire industry.”  Then E-mobility was also the subject of guest speaker Maciej Chmielinksi, Manager Business Development of RWE Polska, who introduced the current RWE project, which is at present being carried out in 26 countries.  He emphasized that here one was dependent on collaboration with other firms in the power sector but also with automobile manufacturers and their suppliers, and raw material suppliers such as LANXESS for example.
In the evening all the conference participants got together for a dinner where central questions could be discussed in more detail with the LANXESS employees from the business units.  Three lectures then formed the conclusion of the “Automotive Days Poland” on the morning of 28 October, in these more detail was gone into about rubber additives and the market development in butyl rubber – LANXESS flagship products that are for the most part delivered to the automobile industry.  “All major manufacturers are in the process of upping their capacities to meet the market demand for butyl rubber.  LANXESS is investing heavily in this in order to increase the quantities globally.  The largest project is the construction of the world’s biggest butyl rubber plant on Jurong Island in Singapore.”

The “Automotive Days Poland” in Warsaw was the largest LANXESS customer event in Poland so far and a successful part of the series of Rubber and Automotive Days that LANXESS stages around the globe for the growth markets in Middle and Eastern Europe.  Warsaw is the capital and, by far and away, the largest town in Poland with approximately 1.7 million inhabitants.  The town lies on the river Vistula and is a cultural, business and political center, in addition to being one of the most important communications, business and commercial centers in Central and Eastern Europe.