Meeting the challenges head on

Can you outline how the past 12 months have been for Clariant Adsorbents?
Guido: Last year continued to be another challenging year for the industry. In 2021, much like the year before, almost all the geographies and markets in which we operate were impacted by the global Covid-19 crisis.
However, the business, last year, was more affected by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This affected European and Middle East market dynamics more than Asia and the Americas, including lower market predictability and greater swings in the supply-demand balance, paired with the need to adjust purification steps to fluctuating crops and oil qualities.
In addition, we have been facing raw material shortages and labour challenges such as a lack of drivers, transportation or external service and maintenance staff. Within our operations, the Clariant Adsorbents team successfully managed these challenges by leveraging our unrivaled network of mining and production sites across the globe and Europe, thus ensuring supply of adsorbents through this critical time. Wherever we could, we accelerated our cost reduction programmes. I am particularly...