China (Mainland)
BASF Pudong site
With about 3,000 employees, BASF Pudong site is one of BASF’s major integrated sites outside of Germany. Established in 2000, BASF Pudong site is BASF’s first wholly-owned production site in Greater China. It is the home to BASF Greater China headquarters and Innovation Campus Asia Pacific since 2012. Integrating global, regional and local know-how under “Verbund” concept, BASF Pudong site provides a platform for intensive interactions between all parties along the innovation process.
In June 2014, BASF has undertaken three key capacity expansion projects for performance materials at its Pudong site in Shanghai: Ultramid® (polyamide, PA), Ultradur® (polybutylene terephthalate, PBT); Elastollan® thermoplastics polyurethane elastomers (TPU), and Technical Center and capacity expansion of of Cellasto® (microcellular polyurethane components).
In the same year, BASF broke ground on the second phase of its Innovation Campus Asia Pacific at its Pudong site in Shanghai, China in July. The €90 million expansion consists of an additional regional research and development (R&D) building and auxiliary facilities and has completed by the end of 2015.
BASF also operates a growing number of facilities in the Shanghai Chemical Industry Park in Caojing. There, the company runs two joint ventures with Huntsman, Shanghai Hua Yi (Group) Co., Shanghai Chlor-Alkali Chemical Co. Ltd. and Sinopec Shanghai Gao Qiao Petrochemical Corp., which manufacture polyurethane components, methylene diphenyl diisocyanate (MDI) and toluene diisocyanate (TDI). At the same site, BASF also operates two facilities producing polytetrahydrofuran (PolyTHF®), a major raw material for spandex fibers, and polyisocyanate (Basonat®) for the coating and furniture finishing industry. Another facility makes precious metals-based salts and solutions for BASF’s mobile emissions catalysts production in Shanghai and other industrial applications.
A few new facilities at BASF Caojing site started construction or operation over the last two years. For example, a new Ultramid® polymerization plant has started production in 2015 and is now BASF’s first polyamide polymerization plant in Asia-Pacific; a new, world-class resin factory also started manufacturing high performance resins and electrocoat in 2015; a joint venture company, BASF Shanghai Coatings Co., started its second, state-of-the-art automotive coatings plant to commence operation in July 2014; a second production line for hexamethylene di-isocyanate (HDI) based polyisocyanates was started up in September 2014.
In addition, BASF, Huntsman, Shanghai Hua Yi (Group) Company, Shanghai Chlor-Alkali Chemical Co. Ltd. and SINOPEC Group Assets Management Corporation kicked off the construction of a new plant with a production capacity of 240,000 metric tons of crude MDI (diphenylmethane diisocyanate) per year. With the new plant, the MDI capacity at this site will be doubled to 480,000 metric tons per year. The partners also plan to build a HCl (hydrogen chloride) recycling plant for the production of chlorine, a precursor for MDI. The facility is expected to start up 2017. The project is subject to further approval of the relevant authorities.