Focused. Leading. Innovative.

CPH Group AG is a stable, focused and profitable industrial group whose two business divisions operate independently in their respective markets. With its technology leadership and its innovative products, CPH Group AG provides its customers with clear added value and, by doing so, occupies a leading position in its chosen market segments.

CPH Group AG comprises the two business divisions of Chemistry and Packaging, each of which operates independently in its specific markets, in each of which it seeks to achieve and maintain market leadership. The two divisions pursue similar business models – differentiation through high customer benefit in attractive niche markets worldwide – in their separate target markets. And their respective companies of Zeochem (chemistry) and Perlen Packaging (packaging) are among the top three in the world in their specific markets. Zeochem and Perlen Packaging are both innovative companies that cultivate close contacts with their customers.

CPH Group AG also seeks to make a positive impact with its product portfolio in environmental terms. The company’s sustainability strategy forms an integral part of its overall corporate strategy and serves as a key foundation for its continued success. In a major development on this front, the company’s shareholders have anchored sustainable long-term value adding in its Articles of Incorporation. The company’s Board of Directors and Group Executive Management have also defined a sustainability strategy and aligned its governance accordingly. The company has also further developed and refined its sustainability reporting to put a particular focus on climate change.

The sustainability report, which is closely aligned to the European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS) and the guidelines thereon, will be found here.

With European sales markets showing saturation trends, CPH Group AG continues to increase its market share in the growth markets outside Europe and in the emerging economies. In establishing new production capacities outside Switzerland, the company has also substantially reduced its exposure to Swiss-franc currency movements over the past few years. Thanks to these actions, the share of its total costs which is incurred in Swiss francs should continue to decline, and with it the corresponding exchange-rate exposure.

Zeochem develops, manufactures and distributes a wide range of products in growth markets such as the energy and the healthcare sectors. These include molecular sieves which are used in the energy industry to purify natural gas and ethanol and deuterated products for use in the pharmaceutical industry, in laboratory analytics and in OLED displays. The production of oxygen for industrial and medical purposes is a further business area that is of key strategic importance. Zeochem is firmly committed to providing top-quality products, and aims to further expand its market position worldwide. To these ends, targeted investments are planned in customer-aligned product innovations and in further increasing production capacities.

Zeochem maintains five production sites where it manufactures its products and then distributes them worldwide. High-value molecular sieves are manufactured in the USA; standard molecular sieves are produced in China; molecular sieve powders and special zeolites are made in Bosnia and Herzegovina; chromatography gels are produced in Bosnia and Herzegovina and India; and deuterated products are manufactured in Switzerland.

Perlen Packaging offers a comprehensive range of PVC mono films and coated PVdC barrier films which are used in the pharmaceutical industry. The company constantly develops innovative new solutions for demanding medicine packaging applications.

Perlen Packaging’s business strategy is focused firstly on further expanding its presence in growth regions and on offering its customers further packaging options for their medicinal products. With its operating locations in Europe, the USA, China, Brazil and Israel, Perlen Packaging can cover all the most important and developing pharmaceutical markets, and can play its full part in particular in the so-called ‘pharmerging markets’ and their particularly high growth.

Perlen Packaging and its coating and slitting plants enjoy a worldwide presence that extends to all the prime business and operating locations of the leading players in the global pharmaceutical sector. In expanding its presence in the international pharmaceutical market, Perlen Packaging seeks to achieve organic annual net sales growth in the mid-single-digit per cent. At the same time, such actions help achieve the further goal of making the company’s supply chains stronger and more resilient, an ambition that Perlen Packaging will continue to pursue over the years ahead.

Perlen Packaging’s second key strategic thrust is to focus its product range on films with high-barrier properties. The packaging for a medicinal product in tablet form will generally consist of a lidding film made of aluminium and a tray film made of plastic. Perlen Packaging manufactures the plastic films, which are usually transparent, and which it delivers on reels either to intermediaries or directly to the pharmaceutical company.

The baseline version of this plastic film is the mono film, some of which Perlen Packaging produces itself and some of which it buys in. Mono films have only low-barrier credentials. What Perlen Packaging specializes in is coating these mono films with PVdC to enhance their barrier properties. This entails applying the PVdC to the mono film layer by layer in emulsion fluid form. The barrier properties this creates will protect the medicinal product in the resulting packaging, particularly from the intrusion of oxygen and water vapour, and thus help lengthen the product’s shelf life. Perlen Packaging is the world’s leading supplier of PVdC-coated high-barrier films today, and its focus on this specific market continues to earn it market share.

Zeochem and Perlen Packaging both pursue a differentiation strategy, and will continue to focus their development on offering high-value products and services. They also plan more strategic investments with a view to further strengthening their position in the growth markets of Asia and Latin America. A key role in this growth strategy will also be played by acquisitions, which, as well as raising enterprise value, will be based on how well the target company’s strategic activities fit into the division’s existing business, how effectively it might be assimilated and how well it is managed and run.

CPH Group AG’s prime strategic success factors include:

CPH Group AG aligns its business activities to markets with above-average growth prospects and potential. Its key value drivers are the long-term megatrends of healthcare and energy.

The world’s population is growing by some 80 million people a year. The growth is primarily attributable to increasing longevity, and average life expectancy is projected to further rise to over 77 in the next 30 years. One of the reasons for this is rising living standards, and the concomitant greater value attached to healthcare among the population. Also, thanks to medical and medicinal advances, treatments and medications are available today for many diseases which offered few prospects of recovery just a short time ago.

The more developed an economy is, the more its people will tend to spend on health. In industrialized countries, healthcare accounts for 10 % or more of gross domestic product. And Verified Market Research expects the global healthcare market to continue to grow by some 9 % a year to an annual volume of USD 782 billion by 2030.

The pharmaceutical industry plays a vital role in healthcare provision. For CPH Group AG, healthcare is a prime value driver and the pharmaceutical industry is a key sales market. Perlen Packaging is firmly aligned to the pharmaceuticals market, and a number of Zeochem’s products are also destined for use in the healthcare sector.

Providing its growing population with energy is one of the major challenges the world will face in the next few decades. To achieve the climate goals set by the United Nations and limit global warming, sustainable energy sources such as biomass, geothermal, hydro, solar and wind energy must be further developed. But despite the substantial growth in such sustainable energy supplies, fossil fuels such as natural gas, oil and coal will remain the prime sources of energy worldwide in the short- and the medium-term future.

Any gases which are to be used in industrial processes must first be cleaned and freed of any impurities such as water or sulphur. Adsorbents supplied by Zeochem ensure that such unwanted elements are removed from natural gas, ethanol, methane and other gaseous substances.

CPH Group AG also plays its part within the circular economy through the products it manufactures and provides. The molecular sieves produced by Zeochem are of mineral origin and can be regenerated by heating, offering customers sustainable and long-lasting solutions for adsorbing and concentrating gaseous substances. Perlen Packaging primarily manufactures PVC films which are combined with aluminium to make pharmaceutical blister packs. The company is also working on developing alternatives to these with smaller carbon footprints.

Zeochem is active in the molecular sieve, chromatography gel and deuterated solvent product segments. In its largest such segment – molecular sieves for industrial applications – the company is one of the world’s top three suppliers, and is the market leader in providing such products for the demanding oxygen concentration process. On the molecular sieve front, UOP, Arkema and Grace are among its prime competitors.

Perlen Packaging is the only provider of packaging films in the world that focuses solely on the pharmaceutical industry. The company is one of the world’s top three suppliers of coated barrier films for pharmaceutical applications, and is a global leader in the provision of PVdC films with high-barrier properties. Its main competitors include Klöckner Pentaplast and Liveo Research.

CPH Group AG aims its products primarily at the pharmaceutical and the industry markets.

The pharmaceutical industry plays a key role in ensuring and maintaining human health, and is largely independent of economic fluctuations. The IQVIA institute expects the global medicines market to grow in value by 3 % to 6 % a year between now and 2027, or by as much as 7 % to 10 % in the emerging economies. CPH Group AG produces PVC-based films for use in the pharmaceutical industry’s blister packs. With the exception of the USA, where medicines are largely supplied in bottles, blister packs are the preferred packaging form for tablets and capsules today. With production sites in Europe, Asia and North and South America, CPH Group AG has a local presence in all the key pharmaceutical markets, and offers them a wide range of film products ranging from mono films to coated films that meet the highest barrier demands. CPH Group AG also manufactures molecular sieves for concentrating medical oxygen and gels for separating complex pharmaceutical agents, along with deuterated solvents which are used as active agents within the pharmaceutical sector.

Many of the processes in the petrochemical, the chemical and the manufacturing industries (such as steelmaking) involve the use of gaseous substances, particularly oxygen, hydrogen, natural gas, ethanol and olefin. CPH Group AG manufactures molecular sieves which purify or concentrate these gases on an industrial scale. Molecular sieves are also used as industrial desiccants, such as in vehicle braking systems or to prevent misting between the panes of multipane windows. CPH Group AG manufactures a wide range of high-quality molecular sieves at its production plants in Europe, Asia and the USA. With its pedigree of innovation, the company is a global leader in the manufacture and provision of complex lithium-based molecular sieves that are used to concentrate oxygen, a field in which it has shown particular excellence in developing new products in close collaborations with its key customers.

With twelve production sites of its own, CPH Group AG has developed a presence in key industrial centres all over the world. The resulting broad geographical spread enables full use to be made of the locational advantages of the various countries concerned while simultaneously reducing currency exchange rate risks.

CPH Group AG’s international customers attach great value to the local care and assistance that such a geographical spread ensures, and also appreciate the shorter and more direct communications channels. Maintaining such a local presence is essential for the company to achieve its aim of responding swiftly and effectively to its customers’ wishes and needs. The associated shorter transport journeys also help tangibly reduce the environmental impact of the company’s business operations. A local presence further lays a firm foundation for lasting customer relations that are based on trust and respect. In addition to its own experienced local sales and service specialists in its main markets, who are all well familiar with local customs and culture, CPH Group AG can also draw on a comprehensive network of distribution partners in all its target markets.

CPH Group AG pursues a clear branding policy. At the corporate level it maintains three brands, which are each aimed at their own markets and target groups. As the overall holding company, CPH Group AG is not operationally active, but serves as the industrial group’s umbrella brand towards its various stakeholders.

The group’s two business divisions operate under their trademarked corporate brands of ‘Zeochem’ and ‘Perlen Packaging’. Both brands enjoy outstanding acceptance and high familiarity in their target markets, where they are bywords for both innovation and tradition. The Packaging Division has been trading under its Perlen Packaging brand since 2010 but traces its business and operational origins back to 1954; and the Zeochem brand has been used since 1979, and originated at the Chemistry Division’s US operation.

Both divisions maintain a product branding architecture that uses the same prefix to identify and assign its products. Thus, Zeochem’s product names generally begin with ‘Zeo-’ (such as Zeoprep) while Perlen Packaging’s product names begin with ‘Perla-’ (such as Perlalux). The product names are also registered as trademarks wherever possible, to protect them from counterfeiting activities.

It was back in 1818 that the Schnorf brothers began producing sulphuric acid and iron and copper sulphates in Uetikon by Lake Zurich. By around 1900, the Uetikon chemicals factory was the biggest producer of sulphuric acid, nitric acid and hydrochloric acid in Switzerland. In 1954 the company diversified in Perlen into the packaging business, going on to specialize in plastic coatings.

The manufacture of molecular sieves began at the Uetikon site in 1973. Six years later the chemistry business embarked on a joint venture in the USA by the name of Zeochem, under which name the Chemistry Division continues to trade today. (The US joint venture was subsequently acquired in full in 1997.)

2024 saw the company’s Paper Division and its real-estate assets at the Perlen industrial site spun off into an autonomous new company named Perlen Industrieholding AG, whose shares have been OTC-traded since the end of June 2024. Further details of this spin-off transaction will be found in the ‘Highlights of 2024’ chapter and in the financial report.

The last 15 years in the history of the company have been marked by international market cultivation and expansion, with further businesses acquired and production plants established in Germany, China, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, India, Israel and Hungary, along with the closure of the original Uetikon site.

Continuity is assured through CPH Group AG’s anchor shareholders, who are among the present-day descendants of the founding families. Further details of CPH’s history will be found on the company’s website at https://cph.ch/cph-group/history/.

The business model of CPH Group AG is firmly focused on international growth markets. By specifically positioning itself in such markets in both sector and geographical terms, the company seeks to achieve organic net sales growth of between 5 % and 8 % a year over the medium term.

CPH Group AG invests unceasingly in developing new products and solutions and further enhancing its processes, to ensure it remains a market leader in the activities of its Chemistry and Packaging divisions. The company also operates development centres in Switzerland, Germany and the USA to help further provide its customers with tangible added value.

The members of CPH Group AG’s Board of Directors and the Group Executive Board are entrepreneurially minded individuals with a broad range of skills and expertise. They can also draw on many years of management and industry experience, and are well familiar with the specific challenges within the company’s various markets.

CPH Group AG is further backed by anchor shareholders from the descendants of the founding families, who maintain a long-term outlook and perspective that strongly colour the company’s philosophy and approach and who are represented by the Chairman of the Board of Directors.

With its focus on efficiency enhancements, its consistent alignment of its business portfolio to market needs and demand and its annual operational investments of some 5 % of net sales, CPH Group AG aims to achieve an average annual EBITDA margin of between 16 % and 18 % and free cash flow margins of 8 % to 10 % before acquisitions over the business cycle. With an equity ratio of more than 50 % and with substantial further debt capacity, CPH Group AG is in sound financial health.

The company maintains a consistent dividend policy with a dividend distribution – with due regard to liquidity and free cash flow both current and projected – of 25 % to 50 % of its net annual result. With one sole exception, CPH Group AG has awarded its shareholders a dividend every year since it was first listed on the Swiss stock exchange in 2001.

CPH Group AG is committed to achieving net-zero emissions. The company is constantly further improving its energy efficiency and reducing its carbon footprint. It can also count on a diverse workforce all over the world – a diversity which is the foundation of its creativity, its innovation and its lasting success.