The Santa Clara plant, Covestro's only production facility in Mexico, celebrates seven decades of industrial operations. The facility manufactures more than 70 products, including materials for coatings, and continues to introduce technological improvements to optimise quality, efficiency and process sustainability.
Covestro, a global manufacturer of high-performance polymer materials, is celebrating the 70th anniversary of its Santa Clara plant (Mexico). Founded in 1956, the facility plays an important role in producing materials for various industrial applications, including the coatings sector.
The plant currently manufactures more than 70 products divided into four families: base polyols, formulations, prepolymers and polyesters. Its production supplies a range of industries, including coatings, construction, automotive, refrigeration, footwear and furniture.
The Santa Clara industrial infrastructure includes reactors, mixing and storage tanks, as well as four specialised laboratories supporting quality control, product development and technical assistance.
The plant's development has been characterised by the continuous modernization of its manufacturing processes. From its early years as part of Bayer and Bayer MaterialScience to its integration into Covestro as an independent company, Santa Clara has adopted new technologies to enhance its production capabilities and respond to the needs of its industrial markets.
In recent years, investments have focused on automation, finishing systems, laboratory modernisation, maintenance and energy monitoring. Quality control is a fundamental aspect of these operations, particularly in sectors such as coatings, where the consistency of raw materials is essential to ensure formulation reproducibility and the performance of finished products.
In 2025, more than 99% of batches manufactured at Santa Clara met quality specifications during the first production cycle, while 100% of finished products were tested before release. During the same period, the plant's four laboratories performed approximately 60,000 analyses and carried out more than 50 projects.
“Reaching 70 years in Santa Clara reflects our ability to evolve alongside our customers and the industry in Mexico. Here, we combine manufacturing experience, technical expertise and local talent with the capabilities of a global company. This anniversary recognises everything that generations of employees have built and, above all, reaffirms our confidence in what we can continue to develop from Mexico into the future,” has stated Isauro de la Fuente, Managing Director of Covestro Mexico.
The Santa Clara plant has also strengthened its industrial safety systems, an especially important aspect of facilities dedicated to the manufacturing and processing of chemical products. In 2025, the facility recorded a Recordable Incident Rate (RIR) of zero and a Loss of Primary Containment Incident Rate (LoPCIR) of zero, the latter relating to leaks or unintended releases of substances during production processes.
Furthermore, 100% of employees and contractors participated in safety training programs, with an average of 14 training hours per employee. The plant also achieved 100% regulatory compliance and obtained a score of 99.6% in its Responsible Care Management System audit.
Resource efficiency and reducing environmental impact are other priorities for Covestro at Santa Clara, in line with the chemical and coatings industries' growing focus on more sustainable production processes.
In 2025, the company completed the modernisation of its Wastewater Treatment Plant (WWTP), enabling 80% of treated water to be reused in industrial processes. This improvement contributed to a 14% reduction in well water consumption and a 27% decrease in the volume of wastewater discharged.
During the same year, Santa Clara managed more than 1,000 tonnes of waste, of which more than 400 tonnes were directed to recycling and co-processing rather than final disposal. In addition, in 2026, Covestro launched an energy transition project that, based on current production volumes, could reduce the plant's greenhouse gas emissions by approximately 50%, equivalent to around 3,500 tonnes of CO2e.