Altana Pharma
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| Industry | Chemicals |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1977 |
| Headquarters | Wesel, Germany |
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Key people
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| Revenue | € 2,075 million (2016) |
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Number of employees
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5,967 (2016) |
| Divisions |
BYK Additives & Instruments, ECKART Effect Pigments, Elantas, Savage Laboratories, Actega. |
| Website | www.altana.com |
BYK Additives & Instruments, ECKART Effect Pigments, Elantas, Savage Laboratories,
ALTANA AG (in-house orthography: ALTANA) is a German chemical company headquartered in Wesel. It was created in 1977 through the spin-off of divisions of the Varta Group. The first CEO was Herbert Quandt.
The group comprises the divisions BYK (coating additives and instruments), Eckart (metal effect pigments and metallic printing inks), Elantas (insulation materials for the electrical and electronics industries) and Actega (coatings and sealant compounds for the packaging industry).
The ALTANA Group has 48 production facilities and over 50 service and research laboratories worldwide. In 2016, the company, with 5,967 employees, posted revenues of approximately €2 billion.
Altana's roots go back to 1873, when Heinrich Byk founded the chemicals factory Dr. Heinrich Byk Chemische Fabrik in Oranienburg. The company grew, and in 1931 it was renamed BYK-Gulden Lomberg. In 1941 majority control of the company was acquired by AFA (Akkumulatoren-Fabrik AG) which was renamed VARTA in 1962. In 1977 VARTA was split into three companies, one of which was Altana.
From 1977 to 2010, Altana was publicly traded on the . Altana was also admitted to trading on the from 2002 to 2007.
On December 19, 2006 the majority of shareholders voted to approve the sale of the pharmaceuticals division to the Danish company Nycomed. Nycomed is owned by an investment consortium led by Nordic Capital and Credit Suisse. With the sale of the pharmaceuticals division, headquartered in Konstanz, Germany, Altana lost a major pillar of its business. At that time, 9,000 of the company’s 13,500 employees were working for Altana in the pharmaceuticals sector, generating two-thirds of the company’s total revenue. And indeed, the balance-sheet revenues fell by around 60 percent in 2006, but gained over six percent in 2007.
The patent for pantaprazole, the main revenue-generator for the former pharmaceuticals division, expired in 2009/2010. While the Altana Management Board justified the divestiture of the pharmaceutical business with delays in the approval of new products, increased research and development costs as well as strict regulatory requirements in the US and Europe, shareholder activists asserted that the Management Board had invested too little in the pharmaceutical business in the preceding years and had failed to develop successor products in time to compensate for the revenue losses to be expected due to the expiry of the pantaprazole patent at the end of the decade.
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