President

of the Board

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After 20 years of successful development work in the field of carbon materials at Swiss Aluminium Ltd. (Alusuisse), Werner K. Fischer started his own business in 1986.  

He built a technology center in Sierre, Switzerland, where employees of Alusuisse’s former carbon research group found a new workplace. Nowadays, Mr. Fischer is always working and represents a well of knowledge.

Member of the Board

Since 2009, Jean-Claude Fischer, the owner’s son, successfully succeeded to his father and took over an active role in R&D Carbon’s business. As a CEO, he stimulated and motivated his teams to develop RDC knowledge.  Since 2021 he joined the board of R&D Carbon and transmitted his operational duties to Matthieu Arlettaz.

VP Carbon Production

Graduated as an electrical engineer in Switzerland, Matthieu Arlettaz joined R&D Carbon in 2002, as process engineer for baking furnaces.

In 2012, he became Vice President Anode Production at R&D Carbon. He conducted production audits and quality control for anode plants in China and other parts of the world, for reducing aluminium smelting cost.

In January 2021, he became CEO of R&D Carbon.

VP Process, Dvlpmt & Data Analysis

Peter Sulger has joined  R&D Carbon in 1992. He helps customers to understand and optimize the baking process in order to improve efficiency and product quality. For RDC’s future, he continuously extend RDC's technological expertise on carbon products to pass on to customers worldwide.

VP Technical Services

Markus Meier has joined R&D Carbon in 1991 and completed his PhD about anode cracking in 1995. Today, he brings the knowledge into the plants to increase the performance of the carbon products with technical audits, process optimizations and specific training courses. He strongly believes that educated and skilled operators are the biggest asset of every plant.

VP Equipment

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Active in the aluminum industry since 2006 where he was actively involved in major projects as commissioning manager, he joined RDC in 2015 to take the lead of the equipment department. . Thanks to his technical knowledge and his various experience in the industry, together with his engineering team, they managed to developed and optimized state of the art test equipment.

VP Research & Development

Julien Wyss joined R&D Carbon in 2010 as laboratory manager. Today he took over the role of Mr. Raymond Perruchoud, co-founder of R&D Carbon in 1986, as vice president of Research & Development with widespread activities related to carbon products for the metal industry. He is still supervising the pilot plant and laboratory department and is actively participating in plant audits and optimizations.

Laboratory Manager

Michel Hürlimann joined R&D Carbon in 2018 as Laboratory Manager. He is an experienced manager with a demonstrated history of working in the chemicals industry.  He has earned a Master’s degree focused on Quality & Strategy Management. As laboratory manager he is responsible today for all testing activities related to research and industrial projects.

Chief Finance Officer

Since 2009, Ursula Giachino is working as CFO at R&D Carbon. Her job is challenging, interesting and she loves making things happen at RDC. She reports numbers from the past, oversees the finance in the present and uses all these information to plan the best future for being recognized as the best company in the world, in the field of carbon technology.