- Business
- Evonik Industries AG is a Germany-based global specialty chemicals company headquartered in Essen, North Rhine-Westphalia. Founded in 1919, the company operates in more than 100 countries and employs approximately 32,000 people. Its core business focuses on the manufacture and sale of specialty chemical products through several key segments: Specialty Additives, Nutrition & Care, Smart Materials, Performance Materials, and Technology & Infrastructure. The Specialty Additives segment offers additives and crosslinkers for growth markets such as coatings, mobility, and consumer goods. Nutrition & Care provides sustainable solutions to improve health and quality of life, including products for personal care, medical applications, drug delivery systems, and animal nutrition. Smart Materials includes innovative materials aimed at resource efficiency and substitution of conventional materials. Performance Materials supplies technology platforms for producing high-volume intermediates serving mobility, plastics, and rubber industries. Technology & Infrastructure encompasses site services and technical operations critical to chemical production facilities.
Recent major changes at Evonik include a significant strategic realignment announced in 2024, where the company is reorganizing from three business lines into two growth-oriented divisions: Customized Solutions and Advanced Technologies, effective April 1, 2025. Both new divisions are expected to generate annual sales of approximately €6 billion each. The company is focusing its Health Care and Coating & Adhesive Resins businesses on their core growth areas, including lipids for mRNA and gene therapy, drug delivery systems, and cell culture ingredients, while divesting or discontinuing less core operations. Additionally, Evonik completed the sale of its Superabsorbers business in early 2024, which generated around €892 million in sales. These changes reflect Evonik’s broader industry response to structural change by concentrating resources on its strongest and highest growth potential businesses to accelerate investment and enhance competitiveness.
Evonik serves diverse industries with its specialty chemicals and related services, including automotive, coatings, agriculture, consumer goods, pharmaceuticals, and energy sectors. The company’s agriculture segment offers specialty chemicals such as active oxygens, catalysts, and formulations that support sustainable farming practices and crop protection. Its pharmaceutical contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO) business provides small molecule active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs), drug delivery devices, and various custom manufacturing services. Evonik emphasizes sustainability, recently achieving ISCC PLUS certification for specialty chemical production, underscoring its commitment to environmentally responsible manufacturing.
Evonik Industries AG is publicly listed under the ticker EVK.DE and is predominantly owned by the RAG Foundation. It generated sales of €15.2 billion and adjusted EBITDA of €2.1 billion in 2024. The company’s strategic focus on specialty chemicals with high value-added solutions, combined with its global reach and recent restructuring, positions it as a leading innovator in the global chemical industry.
This description reflects Evonik’s current business structure, product portfolio, and major strategic initiatives as of late 2025.