Innovation: The Lifeblood of a Specialty Organization

At Avient, our proven ability to innovate materials that enable our customers’ sustainability goals remains a key differentiator for our company. And sustainability is an integral part of our innovation strategy.

R&D Spend

Our guiding principles are outlined in our Sustainability Promise. A crucial enabler to living this pledge is having deep material science and commercial expertise on our team, and we’ve invested heavily in this area. Since 2014, we have increased our commercial resources in R&D, Sales and Marketing. These highly-talented Avient associates add value to our customers and improve sustainability through collaboration and formulating specialty polymer solutions with our Phased Offering Launch process, a proprietary means through which we take new solution ideas from concept to commercialization.

One measure of innovation success we use is our Vitality Index, which shows the percentage of our specialty sales generated from solutions introduced in the last five years. In 2020, our Vitality Index reached 36%*, validating the strength of our technology portfolio. We are committed to growing our innovation pipeline by developing innovative products that meet dynamic market trends and customer unmet needs, as featured in this Sustainability Report. 

*Pro Forma for the Clariant Masterbatch business

The Avient Sustainability Promise

As a leading provider of specialized and sustainable material solutions, Avient is committed to meeting the needs of the present without compromising future generations’ ability to meet their needs. We are committed to creating value for our customers, employees, communities and shareholders through our dedication to ethical, sustainable and fiscally responsible principles.

• We will put our customers first by helping them grow their businesses with innovative, safe and environmentally sound solutions following the principles of trust and environmental stewardship established in our groundbreaking No Surprises Pledge^SM. 
• We will strive to minimize our environmental impact and maximize our conservation of the earth’s resources by using energy-efficient technologies, recycling more, reducing waste, continuously improving operating efficiencies and driving operational excellence. 
• We will provide a safe workplace for our employees and will protect our communities by continuously improving our world-class environmental, health and safety performance. 
• We will create opportunity for our employees by growing our business, building a more diverse workforce, investing in world-class training and development, and making Avient the employer of choice. 
• We will be involved in the communities in which we operate by building closer relationships with charitable and public service organizations and encouraging our people’s engagement in local sustainability initiatives. 
• We will work collaboratively with our suppliers to lessen the environmental impact of logistics across our global supply chain. 
• We will build strong relationships with providers of leading-edge sustainable technologies.