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R&D Carbon, based in Sierre, Switzerland is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year. From humble beginnings, the company is now an established worldwide presence in the industry.
After 20 years of successful development work in the field of carbon materials at Swiss Aluminium Ltd (Alusuisse), Werner K Fischer started his own business in 1 986.
He took over the carbon materials development projects from Alusuisse, which had decided to abandon this sector. He had a clear vision of what the industry needed: a better understanding of how anode quality depends on raw material properties and on process parameters.
He built a technology centre in Sierre, Switzerland, where former employees of Alusuisse's carbon research group found a new workplace. Together with Dr Ulrich Mannweiler, also a former Alusuisse man who joined RDC in 1988, he set up a strategy still valid today:
R&D Carbon (RDC) shall become the world leading supplier of know-how in the field of carbon technology. A multi disciplinary and laterally thinking team shall serve the aluminium, petroleum coke, pitch and electrode industries worldwide. With its extensive experience, and through intensive research in carbon technology, RDC will improve anode quality, so reducing metal production costs and lowering capital investment for production plants.
RDC established six areas...