German-based Evonik, a world-renown player in specialty chemicals, announced recently the intention to acquire Dr. Straetmans GmbH of Hamburg, in order to strengthen its position in the cosmetics industry and especially in the preservative solutions segment. Sources are confident that the agreement will be completed in the first half of 2017 and Hans-Josef Ritzert, a board member at Evonik Nutrition and Care, considered it «a perfect match, both strategically and culturally». Dr. Straetmans’s facilities in Hamburg are poised to become Evonik’s global competence centre for preservative solutions, since as head of the Personal care business line Tammo Boinowitz stated, Evonik aims to offer clients new and complete formulation systems, which will also include preservation prerogatives. This roadmap will both allow Evonik to optimize its customers’ development work; and to extend its global market presence well beyond the European and North-American borders. Dr. Straetmans is considered a specialist in the alternative preservative systems scenario, the use of which is often seen as «complex». This is the reason why today, as the company’s managing director Jan Jänichen recalled, Dr. Straetmans is «introducing larger amounts of surface active ingredients in its formulation». Dr. Straetmans is an expert in conventional preservatives too, and its wide product range suggests the idea that the two firms can now cooperate in order to offer customers new formulation concepts for a sustainable use.