Porto Feliz - Ladies and gentlemen,

senhoras e senhores,

I am delighted to be with you on this very special occasion.

Today, as we gather to mark the completion of our cogeneration project, it seems to me to be a good time to talk about keeping promises.

Peter Drucker, the business writer, warned that promises mean nothing unless they are backed up by commitment.

Fortunately, today we are here to celebrate the end result of a promise that was backed up by a very real commitment.

And LANXESS is a company that takes all of its commitments very seriously.

We have achieved our success because, from the beginning, we made a commitment to greater efficiency and to a more effective business structure.

When we first became independent five years ago, we focused on developing our strengths.  We consolidated our production facilities, optimized processes, and imposed strict cost management controls.

In 2008, when the global financial crisis occurred, we made a commitment to weathering the crisis in the best shape possible.  This meant optimizing our internal operations through more  flexible asset management.  Above all, we achieved this through solidarity – cohesion and cooperation among all of our people worldwide and across all of our business units.

Our results show that we did quite well on this front.  Today we are a successful specialty chemicals producer, positioned at the heart of our industry.  A few days ago we had to adjust our 2009 earnings forecasts upward, to reflect significantly better-than-expected fourth quarter results.  We now expect to achieve EBITA pre-exceptionals of 450 to 470 million Euros for the full year, after previously forecasting 400 to 420 million Euros.

I take this as a good sign for the global economy as a whole, and also as an indicator of just how committed everyone at our company is to making LANXESS a success.

A key element of our successful strategy is our strong, ongoing commitment to growing our businesses in the BRIC countries – Brazil, Russia, India, China.  That is our focus because we believe that is our future.

Obviously, our success in Brazil is vital to the success of our overall corporate strategy.

We believe in Brazil.  The project we are inaugurating today is symbolic of our long and deep commitment to Brazil.

The acquisition of Petroflex two years ago, now fully integrated into our group as LANXESS Elastômeros do Brasil, was an important step for our company, cementing our position at the forefront of the synthetic rubber industry. We now have a solid asset base here with four production sites and a headquarters in São Paulo.  We built strong and trustful relationships with our stakeholders in Brazil, and we will continue to do so.

This event today is also evidence of our company’s commitment to sustainability that we at LANXESS take very seriously.

Our ultimate goal at LANXESS is to achieve sustainable growth in a way that meets the demands of economics, ecology and society in equal measure.

This means that we create products that are compatible with sound environmental stewardship – that not only minimize man’s impact on the world but even substantially improve our ability to take care of it.  It also means that we rely on manufacturing processes that generate as few emissions and as little waste as possible.

We also think of this commitment as a way to support our customers in meeting their own commitments to sustainability.

And we know that it is of enormous importance here in Brazil.

The issue of sustainability is going to be spotlighted very brightly in Brazil during the 2014 World Cup tournament and at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.  People increasingly understand that public events at that scale, and which receive so much attention around the world, need to be executed in a way that is as friendly to the environment as possible.

The products we offer from our Inorganic Pigments business unit and from other units can help make that possible by ensuring that all the stadiums and buildings and infrastructure that are needed for these events are built in such a way as to minimize their environmental footprint.

In fact, our pigments have already been used in the reconstruction of the Soccer City stadium in Johannesburg, where the final will take place in this year’s World Cup.  We look forward to working with some of you in the next few years to make sure that the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics are the most sustainable mass sporting events ever assembled.

One specific aspect of sustainability that we take very seriously is climate protection.  Sustainable energy sources are central to our efforts on this front.

On a global scale, LANXESS has reduced climate gas emissions by 50 percent since 2007. In Germany we intended to cut climate gas emissions by 80 percent by 2012 compared with 2007.  Instead, it achieved this goal already in 2009.

The cogeneration plant that we are dedicating here today is very much in keeping with the spirit of who we are as a company.  It is part of our global investment in efficient production that protects the environment, continuing our successful global initiative to reduce climate gas emissions worldwide.  In fact it is the pilot plant for a series of similar projects we are developing at production sites around the world in this year.

At our rubber facility in Belgium, we will inaugurate soon a cogeneration plant that will run on natural gas.  In India, we have plans for two sites.  

So the plant here in Porto Feliz is setting an historic precedent as we begin to build a more sustainable energy supply for LANXESS.

I am especially pleased to note that this is one of the first projects to contribute to the climate protection targets that were recently proposed by the Brazilian government to the United Nations Convention on Climate Change.  This plant will supply energy that is very close to CO₂-neutral.  It will reduce carbon-dioxide emissions by 44 kilotons annually.

It is designed to achieve efficiency of roughly 90 percent, compared with just 35 percent at a typical conventional power plant.  It makes our site here independent from the public power grid and makes great use of a local resource – bagasse – meaning that transport emissions are also minimized.

Also right here in Porto Feliz, we have developed innovative ways to treat wastewater.  Our “Retro Washing” project has reduced our total water consumption by roughly 50 percent since 2004.

I mentioned earlier that we think of sustainability not just in terms of the environment, but also in terms of economic and social impacts.  

One of the ways in which LANXESS tries to play a positive social role is by supporting a wide variety of educational initiatives around the world.

In Porto Feliz, as in other cities in Brazil, LANXESS has funded the “Reading Room” project, which makes books and literature available to underprivileged people, opening up new educational possibilities to them.  I had the great pleasure of being at the inauguration of one of the reading rooms on my last visit to Brazil.  I can tell you that the reaction of the students who attended gave me plenty of assurance of how important this project is.

We hope it is a reflection of our commitment to social and economic sustainability that, for the third consecutive year, LANXESS has been named one of the best employers in Brazil by the Great Place to Work Institute.

Finally, in keeping with our commitments to sustainability in Brazil, we are announcing a new ecology, education and economy initiative called “e3.”  It is the result of a study that analyzed how LANXESS can best contribute to the needs of Brazil.

We will be holding competitions in which the best environmental projects win financial awards.  We will launch a show about chemistry that will be performed in schools to open up the fascinating world of science to pupils.  And there will be more projects in the future that you can follow on our Brazilian website.

So you see, ladies and gentlemen, we expect this cogeneration project to be the beginning of many good things to come for LANXESS and Brazil.  All of us at LANXESS are determined to be leaders in sustainability and in working to meet the environmental, social and economic goals we share with Brazil.  We know that it is good for our business, our employees, our communities, society, the environment, and for our valued customers.

Thank you very much.