SCIENCE

LANXESS’ Performance Butadiene Rubbers (PBR) Business Unit has established a new Asia Distribution Concept (ADC) known as the ‘floating warehouse’.

Moving away from traditional warehouse storage space on the mainland the ‘floating warehouse’ based in Singapore waters was launched in February 2011 and has already cut the waiting time for Asian customers by half.

Products from Europe, North and South America are shipped directly to the end market or via the ADC in Singapore thus eliminating the need for inbound or outbound warehouse storage. Since shipments are based on LANXESS market intelligence on volumes and types of products to be shipped, there is no loss time waiting for a specific order.

“This process is rather unique, because in the past, there was first the sale to the customer and then the shipment, but now, we ship and sell while the material is on the water. This concept clearly underlines our commitment to meet our customers’ requirements as quickly as possible,” said Luke Hui, Marketing Director for PBR in Asia-Pacific.

Asia represents the most rapidly growing market for LANXESS business unit (BU) Performance Butadiene Rubbers. This is especially true for the tire industry, which accounts for about 70% of the BU’s product portfolio. Demand for performance products within the Asian tire industry has been rapidly increasing due to increasing production of high performance and environmentally friendly tires within the region. To meet this growing demand, LANXESS intends to build a world scale high-performance rubber plant in Singapore in the coming years to serve the Asian market.

LANXESS is a leading specialty chemicals company with sales of EUR 7.1 billion in 2010 and currently around 15,500 employees in 30 countries. The company is at present represented at 46 production sites worldwide. The core business of LANXESS is the development, manufacturing and marketing of plastics, rubber, intermediates and specialty chemicals.