Recently, the headquarters of German chemical giant Wacker Chemie AG announced that it will cut more than 1,500 jobs globally, with the majority of the reductions concentrated at its domestic plants in Germany. This layoff is a key measure under the company’s “PACE” cost-reduction program launched in October, aiming to save over €300 million annually in the future. Layoffs are expected to contribute half of these savings, with the plan set to begin in the first quarter of 2026 and be completed by the end of 2027.
According to the Q3 2025 financial report, WACKER’s sales fell 6% year-on-year to €1.34 billion, while EBITDA dropped 23% year-on-year to €112 million. The company attributed the decline mainly to lower prices and reduced capacity utilization. Earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) shifted to a loss of €20 million year-on-year, and net loss reached €82 million, compared to a net profit of €34 million in the same period last year. This performance slump directly led the company to lower its full-year expectations, admitting that net profit for 2025 will be negative.
Christian Hartel, President and CEO of WACKER, stated that the company is implementing a series of measures to reduce costs to competitive industry levels and return to a growth trajectory. He specifically highlighted that Germany’s excessively high energy prices and bureaucratic hurdles have become major obstacles for the development of chemical companies. This dilemma is evident across the company’s business segments, with its four core businesses showing a pattern of “one growing and three declining”: only the biotechnology business grew by 6% quarter-on-quarter, while the silicone and polymer businesses—its main revenue drivers—remained sluggish. Although the high-purity products for semiconductors performed well in the polysilicon business, overall EBITDA fell 40% year-on-year to €18 million, with the margin dropping from 14% in the same period last year to 8.9%.
Regional market demand also contracted across the board, with sales in Asia and the Americas down 9% and 8% year-on-year, respectively, while sales in Europe fell 3% to €553 million. In fact, this round of layoffs is not a sudden move, as WACKER had already cut 90 jobs at its Tennessee site in the United States in July this year. To date, WACKER employs approximately 16,400 people globally, with Germany—as the core of its R&D and production—being the primary focus of the layoffs.
Data from the German Chemical Industry Association (VCI) shows that the industry’s production level is at its lowest in 30 years, with capacity utilization at only 70%, far below the profitability threshold, and no recovery is expected before 2026. High energy costs, stringent environmental costs, competition from Asian and Middle Eastern rivals, and new U.S. tariff policies raising barriers to entry have collectively eroded the price competitiveness of German chemical companies. Giants such as BASF and Covestro have also lowered their profit expectations, with BASF further shifting its core production capacity to China, investing a total of €10 billion in its Zhanjiang base.
For WACKER, the “PACE” program is a key self-rescue effort, but in the long term, the company must rebuild its technological advantages amid high-cost conditions. For German industry as a whole, as energy benefits fade and environmental pressures rise, redefining industrial strengths has become a critical strategic challenge. Industry insiders worry that if the downturn persists, the century-long advantages of Germany’s chemical industry may be further weakened.
