Lanxess is in the process of restarting its world-scale butyl rubber plant in Zwijndrecht, Belgium, after union-represented production employees agreed to accept the terms of a new two-year collective labor agreement and subsequently ended their strike.
Normal supplies to customers will be re-established once the plant is fully up and running. This process will take approximately one week. In total, LANXESS will have lost nine weeks of production due to the strike. During the strike, the company’s global butyl rubber network has helped to reduce the impact on customers, with supplies coming from world-scale plants in Sarnia, Canada, and Singapore.
“We are pleased that the employees, who were on strike, have voted in favor of accepting the negotiated proposal,” said Guenther Weymans, head of the Butyl Rubber business unit.
LANXESS has invested roughly EUR 250 million in Zwijndrecht in the past years and currently employs 435 people at the site.
Butyl rubber is above all used in tire inner liners – the innermost, air- and humidity-impermeable layer of a tire. It keeps tire pressure constant over a long period, thus making vehicles safer and ensuring they consume less fuel and therefore produce fewer harmful emissions.
Lanxess is a leading specialty chemicals company with sales of EUR 8.3 billion in 2013 and roughly 17,300 employees in 31 countries. The company is currently represented at 52 production sites worldwide. The core business of LANXESS is the development, manufacturing and marketing of plastics, rubber, intermediates and specialty chemicals. LANXESS is a member of the leading sustainability indices Dow Jones Sustainability Index (DJSI World and DJSI Europe) and FTSE4Good as well as CDP’s Climate Disclosure Leadership Index (CDLI).