With the foundation of the joint venture Cofinity-X, ten partners of the automotive industry will further foster the adoption of the Catena-X network

<p style="text-align: center;"><img src="/ueditor/php/upload/image/20230131/1675174620835203.jpg" title="1675174620835203.jpg" alt="2.jpg"/></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">BASF, BMW Group, Henkel, Mercedes-Benz, SAP, Schaeffler, Siemens, T-Systems, Volkswagen and ZF jointly founded Cofinity-X to accelerate the operation and adoption of Catena-X use-cases throughout the automotive industry.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Cofinity-X aims to operate an open marketplace for applications and provide products and services to enable the efficient and secure exchange of data between all participants of the ecosystem initially focusing on the European market.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Cofinity-X will help to make important progress with the operationalization and build-up of end-to-end data-chains to trace material flows throughout the entire value chain.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Basis for the operation will be the trusted Catena-X and Gaia-X principles ensuring full data sovereignty for data sharing parties in an open, trusted, collaborative, and secure environment.</span></p><p><br/></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">With the foundation of Cofinity-X the shareholders BASF, BMW Group, Henkel, Mercedes-Benz, SAP, Schaeffler, Siemens, T-Systems, Volkswagen and ZF initiate the next step in Europe to foster the Catena-X initiative. Cofinity-X strives to be one of the first operating companies which aims to provide products and services for the secure exchange of data throughout the entire automotive value chain.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Klaus Rosenfeld, Chief Executive Officer Schaeffler AG, says: “Together with sustainability, digitalization is driving the transformation of today‘s automotive industry. This transformation can only be successful with a trustworthy and secure data exchange along the entire value chain. This requires top standards and, therefore, a common effort among strong partners. As one of the founding members of Cofinity-X Schaeffler is proud to contributing to this essential goal.”</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><br/></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Future customers will be able to access applications and services to implement use-cases in the automotive value chain such as CO2 and ESG monitoring, Traceability, Circular Economy or Business Partner Data Management.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><br/></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Approaches for decarbonization:&nbsp;Carbon Footprint Tracking solutions enable concise, accurate calculation and reporting of CO2 values along the value chain. This will allow Cofinity-X customers to stay ahead in Carbon Footprint transparency and derive potential sustainability improvements to play an active role in the global effort to reach net-zero.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><br/></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Consistent and reliable traceability:&nbsp;Tracing parts and components at any time throughout the entire supply chain starting with raw material and closing the loop with recycled parts. Traceability applications can give the possibility to display the entire value chain and help to find ways to increase supply-chain resilience.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><br/></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Circular economy for a sustainable value chain:&nbsp;The recycling of materials is an ever-increasing topic of importance within the automotive industry. The information about the condition of components can be transparently displayed among suppliers and customers to properly re-use parts and components. By implementing circular economy, companies can improve the ratio of recyclable materials in their products and reduce waste.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><br/></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Intelligent Business Partner Data Management (BPDM):&nbsp;Companies invest significant resources to keep customer and supplier data up to date. The BPDM services of Cofinity-X clean and enrich business partner data across the automotive industry. Customers of Cofinity-X thus can benefit from sorted, analyzed, uncluttered, and enriched partner data.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><br/></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Collaboration between suppliers and customers throughout the automotive value chain<br/>“Increasing requirements to trace all materials throughout the entire value chain is one of the key factors Cofinity-X is built on. We will be an important part of a rapidly scaling ecosystem in which all companies in the automotive value chain can participate equally. Therefore, our product offering will initiate end-to-end data chains as well as generate value for all the participants,” says Alexander Schleicher, Managing Director Cofinity-X.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><br/></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">A product offering built to drive acceptance and adoption of small and medium- sized enterprises<br/>End-to-end data chains can only be created if all parties are willing to collaborate. Most of the companies in the automotive value chain are small and medium-sized enterprises. Cofinity-X will offer an easy and fast onboarding for these key players. Cofinity-X will build a portfolio around four key product and service offerings. The first products and services will be available from the end of April 2023.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><br/></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Open Marketplace&nbsp;aspires to enable the efficient “matchmaking” of network participants by creating an optimal environment for business applications which customers can implement. All applications offered will be compliant with the Catena-X and GAIA-X data exchange principles.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><br/></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Data Exchange&nbsp;between parties will be based on sovereign, secure and standardized principles without forcing a lock-in effect to certain solutions. Every partner will stay in full control of their own data.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><br/></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Federated and Shared Services&nbsp;will power the business applications offered on the marketplace and enable data exchange in an interoperable open-source approach ensuring added value for each customer.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><br/></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Onboarding Services&nbsp;will foster the adoption of the Catena-X ecosystem and accelerate the digital connection of automotive partners in every step of the value chain to the ecosystem.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><br/></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">“Cofinity-X is pioneering the industrialization of Catena-X standards and software artifacts to offer an onboarding point for customers to the Catena-X data space. I am excited to see the first truly open and interoperable product and service portfolio come to live and derive value for all members,” says Oliver Ganser, Chairman of the Board of Catena-X Automotive Network e.V.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><br/></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Key automotive companies send out a strong signal and commitment<br/>The investment in Cofinity-X underlines the commitment of the founding partners to establish the Catena-X ecosystem. Each shareholder holds an equal share in this joint venture.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><br/></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Cofinity-X<br/>Cofinity-X GmbH is based in Cologne and was founded in 2023. It is a joint venture of BASF, BMW Group, Henkel, Mercedes-Benz, SAP, Schaeffler, Siemens, T-Systems, Volkswagen and ZF. The vision of Cofinity-X is to run an open marketplace for the provision of own and third-party business applications and further services that enable secured and standardized data transfer along the automotive value chain in accordance with the Gaia-X and Catena-X principles with initial focus on the European market. All necessary regulatory approvals have been obtained and Cofinity-X will develop its activities accordingly.</span></p><p><br/></p>