SCHOTT solutions no. 1/2009 > Home Appliances

Cooking in Style

SCHOTT manufactures its 100 millionth Ceran® cooktop panel and transforms the kitchen into a place for encounters.

Birgit Kranzusch

Cooking is currently in and receives a great deal of media attention. But even far away from the tv cameras, more and more people are devoting a lot of their spare time to cooking. Nevertheless, the focus isn’t always on elaborate recipes, but also on the kitchen as a meeting place. SCHOTT has contributed towards this development with its customized and futuristic products. Today, the kitchen is a room in which design and appearance are of major importance. This has not always been the case, however. At the beginning of the 20th century, kitchens mainly performed a practical function and offered very little technical support or design. Cooking technology continued to develop during the postwar period. Electric coil ranges became mass products, yet offered hardly any latitude for individual designs. They were also difficult to clean and extremely sensitive to scratches. Cooking on glass ceramic was hard to imagine back then.

As one of the world’s leading manufacturers of glass ceramic cooktop panels, SCHOTT considers itself a provider of change to the industry. This culminates in innovative products in various colors and shapes that offer kitchen and home appliance manufacturers new possibilities in designing their appliances. This, in turn, allows them to distinguish themselves from others. Thanks to ongoing research and advanced development at the main plant in Mainz, both the designs and the materials have constantly been improved. SCHOTT intends to continue to stand out in the marketplace by offering innovative products. “Only 20 percent of all relevant households all over the world currently cook on glass ceramic, therefore, the market is still huge,” explains Stefan Marc Schmidt, Vice President of Mar­keting and Sales for Home Tech, and adds: “We are well positioned with trendsetting products and ultramodern technology ‘Made in Germany’. The Ceran® cooktop panel that doesn’t contain the toxic heavy metals arsenic and antimony is only one of these innovations. After all, more and more consumers are now deciding to buy products manufactured with sustainability in mind that also protect the environment. A trend that SCHOTT observed quite early and has consistently followed. <|