ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE Automa Chem 2026


SUSTAINABILITY: NOT JUST COMPLIANCE Inside what’s happening at Automa Chem 2026, taking place in Berlin this October...


Discussions will focus on how sustainability and digital transformation both stall when they’re treated as technology purchases, rather than


changes to how a business actually operates T


he Chemical Automation and Digitalisation Congress (Automa Chem) 2026 takes place in Berlin on 26-27 October. It’s a first edition, but the scale behind it is already substantial: more than 100 companies, 250 delegates, around 45 top speakers and 35 exhibitors, alongside 20+ hours of networking built into the programme. That scale comes with backing to match. Evonik joins as Host Sponsor and Endress+Hauser as Elite Sponsor, with regional partners WACKER Chemie, Covestro, LyondellBasell and Worley rounding out a list of companies with real weight in the chemical industry. Sustainability threads through a large part of those two days, and one panel in particular puts energy, emissions, LCA and reporting at the centre of the conversation, alongside how chemical companies build innovation ecosystems with partners rather than going it alone. Daniela Araujo dos Santos, Sustainability Manager and Gianluca Di Lecce, Head of Subcontracting Department (UK Operating Centre) both from Technip Energies, open that conversation with what turning ambition into measurable results actually looks like in practice, through Evolve, the company’s sustainability transformation programme built around directing R&D and innovation toward decarbonisation and circularity. They draw on Net Zero Teesside, a live decarbonisation project, to show automated emissions and LCA intelligence supporting lower-carbon energy systems on the ground rather than on paper. The harder part of sustainability isn’t setting


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the ambition but building the collaboration, across clients, suppliers, subcontractors and local communities, needed to embed it from a project’s earliest phase through to operations. That same tension between ambition and execution shows up again, with Antonio Schiavone, Head of Construction Home Office Department at Tecnimont. He walks through a development programme combining robotics, AI and sustainability controls specifically during construction, a phase that rarely gets this kind of attention. Autonomous inspection and remote monitoring handle hazardous and repetitive work, AI supports progress verification, schedule-risk forecasting and quality analytics, and sustainability measures target fuel use, waste and rework through electrification, smart logistics and material traceability. The programme moves through a defined path from baseline to pilot to scale to optimisation, with technology adoption gated by HSE assurance, interoperable data standards and verified business benefit at every step, not deployed simply because it’s available. The intended outcomes are concrete rather than aspirational: fewer exposure hours, earlier risk detection, less rework and lower site emissions. Robert Witek, Marketing Manager at Ecolab, makes the case for an area that rarely gets billed as a sustainability topic at all: cleaning. Process cleaning consumes significant water, energy and chemicals across manufacturing, and he covers how machine learning, anomaly detection and forecasting models are turning it from a reactive, compliance-driven task into a data-driven lever for operational excellence, catching inefficiencies and abnormal process behaviour that traditional monitoring tends to miss, all without major capital investment, just better use of data. Dr. Torsten Freund, Director Global


Procurement and Head of PMO Chem-X at BASF, turns to a problem behind most sustainability reporting: fragmented product data. Chemical companies still exchange information on safety, sustainability, circularity and compliance through disconnected formats and manual processes. This route drives up cost, slows decisions and raises error risk. It becomes unmanageable once Digital Product Passports require value chain information at scale. Chem-X’s answer is a common, interoperable approach centred on the Digital Material Passport: harmonised guidelines, data models, digital identities, verification mechanisms and governance principles, combined into a technology-agnostic blueprint that connects companies and data spaces. By the end of November 2026, the project delivers this foundation. The harder task follows: keeping the models, standards and governance implementation-ready once funding ends, so companies can scale without rebuilding the solution for every partner or sector. Acted on together, Chem-X can become the digital backbone for trusted material data; left unresolved, fragmentation returns. The same question that runs through those three talks, how to turn a good idea into something that actually delivers, carries into a closing conversation about digital transformation strategy across the chemical industry as a whole. Christos Kapellos, Head of Digital Transformation at Clariant, argues for a value-first approach: initiatives prioritised by their contribution to the P&L alongside safety, reliability and sustainability, rather than by how novel the technology looks. His central point echoes what’s already come up earlier, that digital transformation tends to fail not from weak technology but from starting with the technology instead of fixing the process underneath it first. The full Automa Chem 2026 business


programme is available on request via the Congress website below.


Automa Chem 2026 https://sh.bgs.group/4w3


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