Sales

In the re­port­ing year, the Group was able to achieve slight in­creases in sales vol­umes while prices re­mained the same. De­tailed in­for­ma­tion on these fig­ures can be found in the "Profit sit­u­a­tion" sec­tion.

In the area of out­bound lo­gis­tics, a sig­nif­i­cant re­duc­tion in trans­port costs for Ger­many was achieved in 2024. This was achieved through the suc­cess­ful con­clu­sion and im­ple­men­ta­tion of a ten­der for trans­porta­tion through­out Ger­many ini­ti­ated at the end of 2023. The guar­an­teed prices are valid until the end of 2025. As part of the ten­der, the num­ber of car­ri­ers was also in­creased from two to three in order to ex­pand trans­port ca­pac­i­ties and en­sure de­liv­ery per­for­mance de­spite the on­go­ing dri­ver short­age. This will en­sure that all con­sign­ments are de­liv­ered on time, even in the event of an eco­nomic up­turn in 2025. The de­cline in trans­port vol­umes in 2024 mit­i­gated the ef­fects of the dri­ver short­age. In­ter­na­tional ten­ders were also car­ried out in 2024 and the ex­ist­ing trans­port con­cepts were ex­am­ined for op­ti­miza­tion po­ten­tial. This also en­abled Uzin Utz to achieve sav­ings at in­ter­na­tional level.

Pro­cure­ment and pro­duc­tion

In order to meet the re­quire­ments for ca­pac­ity ex­pan­sion and flex­i­bil­ity, cen­tral mea­sures and op­ti­miza­tions were im­ple­mented at the Ulm site in the re­port­ing year. New heat­ing cham­bers were in­stalled in Plant 1 to in­crease ca­pac­ity and flex­i­bil­ity in the tem­per­a­ture con­trol of raw ma­te­ri­als for ad­he­sive pro­duc­tion. These heat­ing cham­bers are based on a hy­brid heat­ing con­cept and have a sig­nif­i­cantly higher ther­mal in­su­la­tion stan­dard than the pre­vi­ous sys­tems. As well as in­creas­ing ca­pac­ity, this has also re­sulted in sig­nif­i­cant sav­ings in en­ergy con­sump­tion. In ad­di­tion, a new mix­ing sys­tem for par­tic­u­larly high-​viscosity prod­ucts was put into op­er­a­tion at the end of the year. This plan­e­tary dis­solver en­ables the ef­fi­cient pro­duc­tion of spe­cial tile ad­he­sives, grouts and spe­cial ad­he­sives in par­tic­u­lar. In Plant 2, a new sys­tem for sep­a­rat­ing the re­turned flour into three frac­tions was put into op­er­a­tion. This en­ables a sig­nif­i­cant re­duc­tion in the pro­por­tion to be dis­posed of, whereby two of the three frac­tions are reg­u­larly processed in­ter­nally. The re­lease change of the process con­trol sys­tem for the en­tire pro­duc­tion plant car­ried out at the end of the pre­vi­ous year en­abled fur­ther op­ti­miza­tion mea­sures to be iden­ti­fied and grad­u­ally im­ple­mented in the var­i­ous process steps this year. This en­abled the out­put of the two main mix­ing plants to be suc­ces­sively in­creased over the course of the year. The re­sult­ing ca­pac­ity ad­just­ments will take full ef­fect in 2025.

The 2024 fi­nan­cial year was char­ac­ter­ized by a very good sup­ply sit­u­a­tion for raw ma­te­ri­als, pack­ag­ing and mer­chan­dise. The mar­kets were largely very calm and the goods or­dered were de­liv­ered on time and with­out any prob­lems. There were no sup­ply bot­tle­necks and prices sta­bi­lized at a sat­is­fac­tory level. In the past year, how­ever, it was ob­served that var­i­ous news ser­vices were in­creas­ingly re­port­ing on the re­duc­tion or par­tial shut­down of pro­duc­tion ca­pac­i­ties for raw ma­te­ri­als. These de­vel­op­ments will be mon­i­tored very closely over the com­ing months.

In 2024, both Uzin Utz SE and Si­floor AG re­ceived DIN ISO 9001 and DIN ISO 14001 cer­ti­fi­ca­tions as part of a cer­ti­fi­ca­tion audit. In ad­di­tion, Uzin Utz Tools GmbH & Co. KG was cer­ti­fied in the same year in a sur­veil­lance audit in ac­cor­dance with DIN ISO 9001:2015. The aim of this sys­tem­atic qual­ity man­age­ment is the con­tin­u­ous im­prove­ment of the com­pany's per­for­mance, which was com­pre­hen­sively cer­ti­fied for the au­dited com­pa­nies.

Sus­tain­abil­ity also con­tin­ues to play a key role for us in the area of waste dis­posal. Our own waste dis­posal de­part­ment at Uzin Utz SE en­sures that the de­mand for eco­nomic ef­fi­ciency is com­bined with eco­log­i­cal and so­cial re­spon­si­bil­ity. Our em­ploy­ees at the Ulm site are sen­si­tized to the pro­fes­sional and sus­tain­able han­dling of waste dis­posal in dig­i­tal train­ing courses. These stan­dards are passed on to af­fil­i­ated Group com­pa­nies.

In the 2024 fi­nan­cial year, the Group pro­duced at the pro­duc­tion sites in Ulm, Würzburg, Ils­feld, Mettmann, Buochs (Switzer­land), Sursee (Switzer­land), Haaks­ber­gen (Nether­lands), Dover (USA), Waco (USA), Leg­nica (Poland), Sois­sons (France), Shang­hai (China), Ljubl­jana (Slove­nia) and Jakarta (In­done­sia). The over­all ca­pac­ity uti­liza­tion of all Uzin Utz plants was around 80.9%, an in­crease of around 2.2 per­cent­age points com­pared to the pre­vi­ous year (78.7). In line with the fore­casts in the 2023 An­nual Re­port, ca­pac­ity uti­liza­tion in­creased slightly com­pared to the pre­vi­ous year. This in­crease is due in par­tic­u­lar to the mod­er­ate in­crease in ca­pac­ity uti­liza­tion in the area of dry ad­he­sives. This in­crease off­set the slight de­cline in ca­pac­ity uti­liza­tion in the dry mor­tar and wet ad­he­sives seg­ments, which is at­trib­ut­able to ca­pac­ity in­creases.

Per­son­nel

The av­er­age num­ber of em­ploy­ees in the en­tire Group, ex­clud­ing trainees, rose to 1,490 (1,480). Of these, 786 (781) worked in Ger­many and 704 (699) abroad. In ad­di­tion, 44 (44) young peo­ple were given an ap­pren­tice­ship. We were there­fore once again able to main­tain our high level of train­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties and offer young peo­ple prospects for the fu­ture. At the same time, in-​house train­ing of­fers the op­por­tu­nity to de­velop spe­cial­ist staff our­selves and thus coun­ter­act the short­age of skilled work­ers.

The Ex­ec­u­tive Board at the Ulm site has set tar­gets for the pro­por­tion of women in the first two man­age­ment lev­els by June 30, 2027. At the first man­age­ment level (di­vi­sion heads), a pro­por­tion of 11.1% (10.0%) was achieved, while the tar­get quota was 15.0%. At the sec­ond level (head of de­part­ment), a share of 27.1% (23.3%) was achieved, while the tar­get quota was 25.0%. The avail­able fig­ures show an in­crease in both rates com­pared to the pre­vi­ous year. The tar­get quota was there­fore not achieved at the first man­age­ment level. At the sec­ond level, the tar­get was met thanks to the in­crease in the quota.

The tar­get ratio for the Ex­ec­u­tive Board was set at 0% until June 30, 2027. The cor­po­rate gov­er­nance state­ment can be found on the web­site www.uzin-​utz.com (In­vestors - Cor­po­rate Gov­er­nance - Cor­po­rate Gov­er­nance State­ment 2025).

The Su­per­vi­sory Board has set a tar­get for the pro­por­tion of women on the Su­per­vi­sory Board of 16.7% by June 30, 2027. This tar­get has been met and ex­ceeded (33.3%) by the ap­point­ment of Amelie Klußmann and Michaela Au­renz Mal­don­ado as mem­bers of the Su­per­vi­sory Board.