It is to be assumed that, like its competitors, Röchling Group (Mannheim / Germany; www.roechling.com) is also suffering from the economic crisis, even though there was relatively little evidence of this at the press conference on 10 June in Mannheim. "We set off on our march through the desert with enough water on board," said Georg Duffner, president and CEO of the Röchling Group in response to a detailed question on the company's financial position. The audience was not even able to extract from him the smile that has usually accompanied the "we are satisfied" statement of previous years, which might be interpreted as a sign that Röchling is struggling after all. Nevertheless, it may be supposed that earnings in 2008 were positive, because the assets position improved without any additional funds from shareholders.

The short-time working quota at the moment is 60-70%. Contracts with temporary staff have been terminated and, including these, the workforce has been reduced from nearly 6,200 at the turn of the year to its present figure of below 5,900 – see Plasteurope.com of 04.05.2009, but this may not be enough in view of the decline in sales and incoming orders of between 20 and 30%. Duffner did, however, announce that there would be no further enforced redundancies, although he did not explicitly exclude this.

In Q1 2009, the Group posted sales of EUR 196.2m (EUR 273.4m in Q1 2008). Incoming orders slipped by nearly 34% to EUR 183.9m.

Sales in 2008 amounted to EUR 1.07 bn (EUR 1.09 bn in 2007). High-Performance Plastics accounted for EUR 509.6m (EUR 490.7m) of this, and Automotive Plastics for EUR 553m (EUR 572m). Up to and including October, growth had been 8% compared with the previous year, but after that business fell, in Duffner's words, "like a guillotine". Incoming orders also responded heavily to the continuing crisis and dropped to EUR 1.06 bn (EUR 1.12 bn).

In regional terms, Germany accounted for 47%, which was a slight increase, while the rest of Europe added 3 percentage points to reach 36%. Of this, however, only 6 percentage points were generated in eastern Europe. "We are doing too little business there at the moment," said Duffner, "we must increase it." Eastern Europe is still regarded as a large growth market, and, as was boldly predicted by Ludger Bartels, responsible for high-performance plastics, "will be the first to pick up again." Röchling recorded 13% (14%) of its sales on the American continents, but in Asia the share fell from 9 to 4%, despite the increased marketing in India and the recent setting up of a machining plant in Mumbai for high-performance plastics.

India is nevertheless still regarded as the market of the future for car production, although the growth will not come as quickly as had been thought in the past. The company was already well represented with its High-Performance Plastics division, said Duffner, but the Automotive Division was dependent on lucrative orders in India that were evidently taking a long time coming.

Despite the efforts to diversify, for example to the French OEMs, the company has not made much real progress in the automotive business. With BMW and VW/Audi, which each account for around 25% of the company's sales, plus Ford (about 16%) and Daimler (a good 10%), four companies account for more than three quarters of Röchling's sales. The French total is minimal, as is – perhaps fortunately – that of General Motors and its subsidiaries.

Among the innovations on which Röchling is working together with carmakers such as BMW and VW are applications for electrically driven and induction-type vehicles. There have also been some new developments for Nissan's "Pivo" concept vehicle. On the other hand, the company is not interested in completely new developments because it wants to concentrate on areas in which it is already strong, in other words components in the engine compartment and on the underbody. It is hoped that these two segments will also generate the growth for the coming years.