January After the tsunami in South-east Asia, Linde makes a donation of over US$350,000
February With the order to supply an air separation plant to the Baosteel Group, the biggest steel production company in China, Linde strengthenings its
position as a leading supplier of air separation plants in the growth market of China.
Linde hosts the International Hydrogen Day in Berlin
March At the press conference of Linde AG on the annual results, the President of the Executive Board, Professor Dr. Wolfgang Reitzle, gives a positive summary of the 2004 fiscal year and the first two months of 2005. The Executive Board defines its objective for the year 2005 – to continue to grow Group sales and Group earnings.
April The first Monte Carlo rally for fuel cell and hybrid vehicles demonstrates the potential of hydrogen as an environmentally friendly means of powering cars.
May The ethylene plant built by Linde in Bandar Imam in Iran, which has a capacity of 500,000 tonnes per year, comes on stream.
June Linde is commended for its outstanding technology management in the Material Handling business segment.
July The future centrepiece of Europe’s biggest natural gas liquefaction plant covers 2,700 nautical miles on its long journey from Spain to Northern Norway. Linde constructs the plant on the island of Melkøya off Hammerfest.
August The Linde Group makes a mandatory declaration of commitment to document its objective of combining profit-based trading with environmental protection and social involvement. This corporate responsibility policy emphasizes the responsibility, commitment and future competence of the company.
September BASF awards Linde the contract to expand the capacity of its naphtha steam cracker in the Belgian town of Antwerp. This will create the biggest plant of its type in the world. The contract value is around €180 million. Linde builds Germany’s second hydrogen liquefaction plant at the Leuna chemical site. The project will be completed by the middle of 2007, directly adjacent to the hydrogen production plants also operated by Linde. PetroChina International awards Linde the contract to build China’s biggest ethylene plant in Dushanzi in the north-west of the country.
The mega-cracker with an annual production capacity of one million tonnes of ethylene and 500,000 tonnes of propylene should be finished in the second half of 2008.
October Linde publishes its first corporate responsibility report. In it, the company reports on the commitment of the whole Group to the four strategic action areas: the environment, employees, society and the capital market. From now on, the corporate responsibility report will be a permanent feature of our annual reporting process, together with the quarterly reports and the annual report.
November Linde is awarded its biggest ever individual contract for air separation plants from the Saudi Basic Industrial Corporation (SABIC) in Saudi Arabia. The contract is to engineer, supply, construct and bring on stream two oxygen production plants, each with a capacity of 3,000 to 3,600 tonnes of oxygen per day. Completion is scheduled for April 2008. The value of the contract is more than €300 million.
December Linde signs up to the Global Compact, a United Nations initiative. The Global Compact represents a global alliance of organizations, who have made a commitment, in collaboration with more than 2000 companies in the private sector worldwide, to respect human rights, to comply with labour standards, to promote environmental protection and to fight corruption.