On Thursday September 22, 2005 Taminco organised its first Art_&Chemistry Day.

This day had different meanings:

• It was thought to celebrate Taminco’s 2 years’ existence
• The inauguration of our new Research Center
• The confrontation with ART that should be the catalyst to stimulate innovation.

The inauguration of our new Research Center will be the occasion to launch a number of initiatives to stimulate innovation.

Only I want to make clear that innovation will not be the prerogative of our Research Department, but that all people, every department will be invited to join us on our innovation journey.  Taminco will create the room, the freedom, to take initiatives, to learn from failure and most importantly “to think out of the box”.

The confrontation with Art should help us to have a critical attitude towards ourselves, to have an open mind for what is happening around us in contrast of being critical for others and looking only for confirmation of our ideas.

But more importantly this Art_&Chemistry Day is there to invite all of you but also our customers, suppliers, universities, local and regional authorities to work more closely than ever before with us, to collaborate across the borders, yes, “to think out of the box” together, in order to find answers to:

• future consumer/customer needs
• develop new business models
• respond to resource constraints and rising energy costs
• reduce environmental impact in our productions
• meet pending legislative requirements, such as REACH

These may seem important challenges at first, but did we not all learn that the challenges of today are the opportunities of tomorrow and will lead to innovative future developments, assuring the long time competitiveness of all of us.

Pol Vanderhaeghen, CEO