The Research and Development Activities are determining for the growth of Rhodia's business. Rhodia's R&D organization goal is to contrive partnerships between expertise centers and grant support for the project teams global network.

Accelerating the launch time in the market is a constant and critical priority of our customers and the research organization of the Group aims at maintaining its partners several steps ahead of the competition, in their markets.

Innovation is a powerful marketing tool that promotes new relationships with customers and opens paths for little explored market niches.

Main Figures (base 2005)

• 1.300 researchers in the world
• A R&D budget in the amount of € 146 million in 2005, that is, 2,7% of the sales
• 134 patent requisitions in 2005
• 5 multidisciplinary R&D centers in the world:
• Lyon and Aubervilliers (France), Bristol (United States), Paulínia (Brazil), Shanghai (China)

• "Future Laboratory" next to Bordeaux (France) :
  created to improve our productivity of research and reduce innovations' launch time in the market
  
• Cooperation agreements with important universities and research centers in the world:
  
  - National Center of Scientific Research in France (CNRS);
  - California University in Santa Barbara, Princeton University, UC Riverside and Harvard, in the United States;
  - Louvain Catholic University, in Belgium;
  - Campinas State University (Unicamp), in Brazil

To know more about the Laboratory of the future, click here