Bayer MaterialScience inaugurates Color Competence and Design Center in Greater Noida, India

Greater Noida, February 1, 2011 – Bayer MaterialScience inaugurated its Color Competence and Design Center in Greater Noida, near New Delhi today. This new Center provides products and solutions for polycarbonate compounds, ranging from color matching and small-scale production, to the broad range of technical services to support injection-molding and compounding processes. This enables customers to adapt quickly to fast-evolving trends, and explore new options for color, surfaces, geometries and design, while leveraging Bayer MaterialScience's global expertise and extensive know-how of the local markets.

”Our investment is a reflection of Bayer MaterialScience’s commitment to the India market, as well as of our vision to further strengthen our leading position in the polycarbonate market globally,” said Dr. Günter Hilken, Member of the Executive Committee of Bayer MaterialScience AG and global head of the polycarbonate business. “With our Color Competence and Design Center in Greater Noida, we believe we are in good stead to show how Bayer MaterialScience is delivering the best value for polycarbonate solutions in the market.”

The Center in Greater Noida is the latest addition to Bayer MaterialScience’s global network of capabilities. Other Color Competence and Design Center facilities worldwide are located in Newark (USA), Filago (Italy), Uerdingen (Germany), Map Ta Phut (Thailand), Shanghai and Guangzhou (China). The Color Competence and Design Centers are complemented with three Innovation Centers in Leverkusen (Germany), Amagasaki (Japan), and the Polymers Research and Development Center in Shanghai (China).

The Greater Noida facility is a one stop solution for customers offering four capabilities under one roof: a color competence center, including a color interaction room; flexible small-scale production and sampling, and pilot production; application development along the value chain and customer management. As part of the global network, experienced specialists will boost the support of customers’ projects by tailored technical advice and consultancy.

Creating a More Colorful World for Consumer Products, Electronics and Automotive sectors

A customer visiting the Greater Noida Center will have access to the huge, on-site Color Library of possible colors in a visible spectrum, in transparent, translucent and opaque forms. The Center offers several thousand colors developed by Bayer through data sharing between the Color Competence Centers and production sites of Bayer MaterialScience around the globe.

The Color Competence and Design center also develops new colors and matches existing colors as per specifications from the customer.

State-of-the-art small-scale production capabilities

Because of the high turnover of consumer electronics products, including laptop computers, mobile phones, televisions and home electronics, among others, manufacturers are often faced with the challenge of producing small quantities of a wide variety of products. Color Competence and Design Center’s scalable production capacity from kilogram requirements to standard production orders according to the customer’s needs is state-of-the-art. This capability is essential as it helps customers minimize waste while meeting demand, reducing costs and enhancing production efficiency.

Bayer MaterialScience in India : Closer to the customer

Stephan Gerlich, Country Group Head, Bayer in India, “The Color Competence Center in Greater Noida is another step from Bayer towards investing in the strategic growth market of India. By featuring a color chips sample room where customers can see thousands of colors as well as color-matching to provide a more interactive and creative experience, we are coming closer to our customers – in order to provide a quick transformation from concept to commercialization. In that sense, our facility in Greater Noida offers even more value to manufacturers in this region.” He further added, “We recently inaugurated our “EcoCommercial Building” – a net-zero emission building - at the same location and we already have a polyurethane systems house here at Greater Noida. This reiterates our commitment to the Indian market and our customers here. We want to be able to provide modern technologies that enhance our presence here, while at the same time help us to further develop the market and open up new channels of participation with our consumers”.

About Bayer MaterialScience
With 2009 sales of EUR 7.5 billion, Bayer MaterialScience is among the world’s largest polymer companies. Business activities are focused on the manufacture of high-tech polymer materials and the development of innovative solutions for products used in many areas of daily life. The main segments served are the automotive, electrical and electronics, construction and the sports and leisure industries. At the end of 2009, Bayer MaterialScience had 30 production sites and employed approximately 14,300 people around the globe. Bayer MaterialScience is a Bayer Group company.

Greater Noida, February 1, 2011

Contact:

Aloke V. Pradhan
E-mail: aloke.pradhan@bayer.com

Forward-Looking Statements

This release may contain forward-looking statements based on current assumptions and forecasts made by Bayer Group or subgroup management. Various known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors could lead to material differences between the actual future results, financial situation, development or performance of the company and the estimates given here. These factors include those discussed in Bayer’s public reports which are available on the Bayer website at www.bayer.com. The company assumes no liability whatsoever to update these forward-looking statements or to conform them to future events or developments.

Copyright © Bayer CropScience Ltd