K 2025 Brings ‘The Material Effect’ to Life with Breakthrough Circular, Smart, and High-Performance Materials
At K 2025 in Düsseldorf this October, Covestro will unveil a powerful narrative under the banner “The Material Effect,” revealing how advanced material science can solve some of today’s most pressing global challenges. As the world’s premier trade fair for plastics and rubber, K marks a pivotal moment for the industry—and Covestro is seizing it to spotlight over 20 innovation stories that embody its vision of becoming fully circular. This vision has gained renewed urgency amid overlapping crises—from climate disruption and energy volatility to geopolitical and supply chain tensions—reminding us that resilience now demands adaptability, innovation, and sustainability more than ever.
At booth A75 in Hall 6, visitors will witness how Covestro is mobilizing its expertise in sustainable future, automotive, electronics, healthcare, and sports & leisure. Among the standout exhibits is the SUE “People Mover”, a driverless electric shuttle by UE | STUDIOS built with polycarbonate glazing, lidars, and mono-material components like Arfinio and TPU. This concept vehicle highlights how lightweight, recyclable polymers with exceptional durability and design freedom can transform urban transportation.
Digital innovation also takes center stage with IMAGIO, a digital sampling tool that creates realistic material twins for product visualization in early design stages—eliminating the need for physical prototypes and accelerating time-to-market. This tool exemplifies their push toward digitized material development, aligning with broader digital transformation trends across industries.
Behind the exhibit—and behind “The Material Effect”—is Covestro’s deep-rooted strategy for circularity and climate neutrality. The company aims to achieve full circularity by using alternative raw materials, green energy, and advanced recycling technologies. Internally, Covestro targets operational climate neutrality (Scope 1 and 2) by 2035, and ambitions extend to complete value-chain climate neutrality (Scope 1–3) by 2050. They are achieving this through eleven Power Purchase Agreements, supplying about 16 percent of their global energy use with renewables.
“The world seems to have gone off track, and the chemical industry is feeling the full force of the current multiple crises,” he warned. Yet he also highlighted a hopeful direction: “The future will be ever greener and smarter. At Covestro, we are paving the way for that… with our recyclable, climate-neutral high-performance plastics—whether in e-mobility and autonomous driving, efficient buildings, or digitalization.”
A key strategy is the increasing use of alternative raw materials—including biomass, post-consumer waste, CO₂ sources, and green hydrogen—through mass-balance procurement certified by ISCC PLUS. This allows fossil and renewable feedstocks to be processed together while attributing green content to finished products. Covestro now applies mass balance at over 20 global sites, including prominent plants in Leverkusen, Krefeld-Uerdingen, Dormagen, Baytown (US), Shanghai, and Changhua (Taiwan).
The company’s CQ label—short for Circular Intelligence—marks products with at least 25 percent alternative raw materials. Within CQ, additional sub-labels define sourcing and production methods: RE for renewable-based polycarbonates, RP for chemically recycled post-consumer polycarbonate via mass-balance, and R for mechanically recycled content. Notable early CQ-certified products include climate-neutral polycarbonate from Krefeld-Uerdingen and EIDesmodur CQ, a mass-balance MDI introduced in 2022.
Covestro is also establishing innovative recycling technologies under the Evocycle CQ brand—chemically recycling polyurethane mattress foam into raw materials for new production. This pilot contributes to a broader “Circular Foam” collaboration involving 22 partners, with the goal of recycling one million tons of PU foam and saving 2.9 million tons of CO₂ annually by 2040.
Concrete examples of CQ applications span multiple sectors. In electronics, polycarbonate grades like Makrolon RP with up to 72 percent recycled share deliver virgin-quality transparency and durability while promoting circularity. At the same CES 2025 event that showcased IMAGIO, Covestro highlighted polycarbonate innovations, battery packaging resins, and electronics solutions—all underlining “Material Effect” themes of performance and sustainability.
“The Material Effect’ enables our customers and partners to achieve more—in terms of sustainability, circularity, and performance.”
In automotive and mobility, CQ polycarbonates are enabling low-carbon EV charging stations and lighting components, while sustainable coatings and adhesives—including bio-based clearcoats developed in collaboration with Audi and BASF—support decarbonization across the vehicle value chain.
The strategy presentation previewed at K also outlines Covestro’s directions: nearly 1 billion in circular economy capex over 10 years, an R&D investment shift where 80 percent of R&D spending targets UN SDG-related projects by 2025, and emission reductions goals of –30 percent for Scope 3 by 2035. These extend R&D into quantum computing, biotechnology, and electrochemistry to accelerate circular breakthroughs.
At K 2025, Their innovation roadmap will be on full display—from advanced materials in health care and sports to building insulation, beverage packaging, and digital interfaces. Each of the 20+ innovation stories illustrates how “The Material Effect” can deliver measurable outcomes: lower carbon footprints, improved product lifecycles, and material-driven societal impact. Each story reinforces Covestro’s core message: materials are not merely enablers—they are tools for transformation.
Underlying this is the idea, championed by Jochen Hardt, Vice President and K 2025 project lead, that Covestro’s strength lies in combining material science, process engineering, and application know-how. “That unique combination… makes the decisive difference,” Hardt said. “ ‘The Material Effect’ enables our customers and partners to achieve more—in terms of sustainability, circularity, and performance.” At a moment when the chemical industry faces multiple pressures, Covestro stands firm: performance must be sustainable, and sustainability must perform.
Associate Editor Modern Plastics Asia Modern Plastics Middle East & Modern Plastics Africa
Covestro’s presence at K 2025 is not simply a product showcase—it is a strategic manifesto. In person and through interactive exhibits, the company will demonstrate how the circular economy, digital acceleration, and climate neutrality are no longer distant goals but operational pathways available today. From cradle-to-gate, cradle-to-cradle, and digital twins to driverless e-shuttles, Covestro’s message at K will be clear: The Material Effect empowers industries—and societies—to build a resilient, net-zero future with the power of high-performance, circular plastics at its heart.
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