Joerg Hellwig

Jörg Hellwig, Head of the Inorganic Pigments business unit at specialty chemicals group LANXESS, used the example of his division in his presentation to talk about the need, even as a global market leader, to constantly question the business model and to consistently follow a value orientation in all processes.

Jörg Hellwig began his career at Bayer AG in Uerdingen in 1981 as a commercial trainee. After working in various positions in the Iron Oxides business unit, he moved to Leverkusen. There he was employed in the Marketing, Controlling and Supply Chain Management functions of the Inorganic Chemicals business unit of Bayer AG. As product manager for titanium dioxide, he played a leading role in the sale of the business to Kerr-McGee Pigments. After almost five years (1998 - 2002) at the Bayer U.S. site in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he was responsible for the inorganic and organic pigments business in the USA, Canada and Mexico as Head of Marketing & Sales, Jörg Hellwig returned to Germany in January 2003. As Managing Director of Dorlastan Fibers & Monofil GmbH and Chairman of the Supervisory Board of the U.S. company Dorlastan Fibers LLC, he was given the responsibility of restructuring Bayer AG's global fibers business. This business became part of LANXESS in 2005 and was successfully sold to Asahi Kasei in Japan shortly afterwards. From 2005 to 2007, Jörg Hellwig was CEO of the Trevira Group, one of the world's leading suppliers of specialty polyester fibers and part of Reliance Industries, India's largest privately owned company. At the time of his departure at the end of 2007, Trevira had been strategically repositioned and was profitable. He returned to LANXESS in 2008 and has since headed the Inorganic Pigments business unit. With the main site and the world's largest plant for the production of iron oxides in Krefeld-Uerdingen, the competitiveness of the German site is a key issue for him. Continuous investments are being made in the expansion of the international sites in Brazil and China, but also locally in Krefeld-Uerdingen in efficiency improvements, process optimization and capacity expansion. Sustainability, product quality and customer focus are the top priorities.

Status: Beginning of 2015