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Citral: A key building block for fine chemicals |
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Perfume has a gentle floral fragrance, the house smells wonderful after cleaning, and the laundry smells fresh. Few people realize that a real all-rounder is responsible for the scent of lemons, violets or roses: citral. Not only do we sell this aroma chemical to the perfume industry, we also use it as a raw material for 10 further fragrances and flavors, vitamins A and E, and carotenoids. In 2004, we started operations at a new world-scale plant in Ludwigshafen that has an annual capacity of 40,000 metric tons per year. We have structured the entire value-adding chain in accordance with this new capacity in recent years. The advantage of the new process is that it is simpler and more cost effective. Furthermore, the citral plant is completely backward integrated: It utilizes the advantages of our Verbund as far back as the basic chemicals produced by the steam cracker. Today, we are by far the market leader in citral-based aroma chemicals. The citral plant is an important building block for our future, and will help strengthen our leading position in fine chemicals in the long term.
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