At Schott, the gaze is directed towards the future or more and more often upwards.

Because the Mainz-based special glass manufacturer, which, according to the board of directors, "closed the past financial year with solid financial figures despite major challenges", intends to deal even more intensively than before with topics such as astronomy and space travel.

For the Extremely Large Telescope, the largest of its kind, which is being built in the Chilean Atacama Desert, the 500th of a total of almost 1000 required mirror substrates has just been delivered, it was said on Wednesday at the sidelines of the annual press conference in the main plant on Hattenbergstrasse.

For 2021/22, a record turnover of almost 2,

Markus Schug

Korrespondent Rhein-Main-Süd.

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Dass das Jahresergebnis dennoch um sieben Prozent auf 269 Millionen Euro zurückging, erklärte Finanzchef Jens Schulte mit der Ausgliederung der gewinnträchtigen Pharmasparte. Dazu gehören die Herstellung von medizinischen Spritzen, Ampullen und Fläschchen, für die unter anderem im Mainzer Werk dünne Glasrohre als Vorprodukt gefertigt werden. Das nicht zuletzt infolge der Corona-Pandemie weiter ausgebaute Geschäftsfeld soll laut Finanzvorstand durch einen Börsengang oder eine Kooperation mit einem neuen Minderheitspartner gestärkt werden, Was noch in diesem Jahr „absolut möglich“ sei.

The fact that Corona has apparently lost its terror and that people are no longer at home or in their own kitchens as often can also be seen from the Schott figures: the demand for kitchen equipment, including the actually quite popular Zerodur glass ceramic hobs, according to Schulte, decreased noticeably.

On the other hand, according to CEO Frank Heinricht, the development is encouraging, among other things, in light guides for robotic surgery, which enable doctors to have an "optimal view of the human body".

Climate neutral by 2030

Heinricht described the research work in California, during which a breakthrough in nuclear fusion was achieved in December, as a flagship project for which Schott supplied more than 1000 individual parts – such as laser glass, lenses and filters: For the first time, more energy was generated when atomic nuclei were fused than been consumed.

From the point of view of the Mainz-based company, the laser rods of the technology group with more than 17,000 employees worldwide, which is 100 percent owned by the Carl Zeiss Foundation, played a major role.

Despite a number of crises caused by the Ukraine war, increased energy and material costs and global supply bottlenecks, those responsible continue to focus on expansion.

For this year alone, investments totaling a good 500 million euros are planned at various locations, half of them in Germany.

In Mainz alone, where, according to Schulte, around 400 million euros have flowed in the past five years and where a new tube trough has just been put into operation, a further 80 million euros are to be spent on improvements.

It would be nice to add 100 employees to the workforce of around 3,000.

However, it is difficult to recruit specialists worldwide.

A number of things are also being tested in Mainz that should help to achieve the goal we have set ourselves of producing climate-neutrally throughout the group by 2030.

According to the Board of Management, the requirement to use 100 percent green electricity has already been met.

Whether and to what extent the natural gas previously used for glass melting can be completely replaced by electricity or hydrogen in the future is still being investigated: alternately directly at the furnaces or in laboratories.

In addition, discussions are being held with partners such as the public utility company in order to implement Mainz's own hydrogen network as soon as possible, with the help of which individual industrial companies and possibly also the main station could be supplied from the Ingelheimer Aue.