Levaco Chemicals: Delivering a Strong Portfolio and Innovative Solutions and Technical Support with Quality and Flexibility

Editor's Note: ″We have a strong portfolio that serve built-in, as well as tank-mix formulations, including broad range of additives such as dispersants, emulsifiers, wetting agents and anti-foams. ″ Dr. Mahmoud Elgammal, Business Unit Manager Agro & Coating Solutions at Levaco Chemicals, said in a recent interview with AgroPages. 

He also shared Levaco’s business overview, its additives and auxiliaries for agrochemical formulations and related features, technical support and innovative solutions, as well as the overview of additives and auxiliaries R&D and production etc.

Dr. Mahmoud Elgammal

Business Unit Manager Agro & Coating Solutions at Levaco Chemicals

Please introduce LEVACO Chemicals, its global presence and core competence.

Levaco Chemicals is a leading manufacturer of specialty chemicals and additives. We supply to different industrial segments, such as agrochemicals, coating, and the food industry. Our production core competence is alkoxylation chemistry. However, our production is a multi-purpose plant, where we can carry out several chemical processes. We supply globally and we are present in around 42 countries across the globe.

Please introduce LEVACO Chemicals’ additives and auxiliaries for agrochemical formulations and their features. How does LEVACO Chemicals combine products with services?

Levaco Chemicals has a great heritage in the agrochemical additives industry, having started out as part of the structures of a larger chemical producer. We have been supplying this industry since 2004, after the digestion of Bayer surfactants business. Our strongest service beside quality and technical competence is the flexibility, where we provide fast responses to our customers for commercial as well as technical aspects. Overall, we have a strong portfolio that serve built-in, as well as tank-mix formulations, including broad range of additives such as dispersants, emulsifiers, wetting agents and anti-foams. 

What are the challenges in formulation innovation and the possible solutions? Could you share some specific cases of how LEVACO Chemicals helps clients develop innovation formulations suited to different market needs?

The agrochemical industry depends mainly on technical support and innovative solutions. Levaco is a supplier of additives as well as technical services. Levaco has two application laboratories, one in Leverkusen, Germany, and the other one in Shanghai, China to provide customers with product development and formulation services. We support our customers with new, innovative additives that help them to formulate their products and work closely with them to solve specific challenges. We always look to create sustainable solutions and we try to follow customer needs to make their formulation safer and more efficient. We have introduced several new products and sustainable solutions that have helped our customers to improve and enhance their safer formulations such as oil dispersible (OD), Suspension Concentrate (SC), Wettable Granules (WG). 

Could you introduce the overview of additives and auxiliaries R&D and production, and application situation of LEVACO Chemicals and relevant facilities & capabilities? What are the challenges and countermeasures during the above process?

We are located in the Chempark Leverkusen, the second largest chemical complex in Germany. We receive our raw materials and our upstreams via pipelines. Our production is a multi-purpose plant where we manufacture different types of chemicals. Additionally, we have our R&D facilities and a pilot plant where we are capable to easily scale up our products. We have application laboratories, where we investigate and characterize the properties of our products to come to the industry with proactive solutions. We also have collaboration projects with universities and research institutes to learn more about our products and their applications.

Could you share some innovation technologies in the formulation R&D, Production and Application? And talk about the application situation of automation control and artificial intelligence (AI) in formulation application and production of your company?

Unfortunately, this is more in the direction of the end-user application. Actually, we provide our additives to agrochemicals manufacturers, who carry out further application tests involving artificial intelligence. As an example, the application via automated control such as drone spray applications grew in the last decade and is spreading rapidly. In this application field we cooperate with our customers to make sure that our additives and products are compatible and complying with their automated applications.

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