“Helping Hands” campaign: BASF provides hospitals in the German Rhine-Neckar metropolitan region with free hand sanitizer

BASF plans to provide hospitals in the Rhine-Neckar metropolitan region with free hand sanitizer, probably starting at the end of this week. In this way, BASF wants to help overcome the current bottleneck for hand sanitizer that has arisen as a result of significantly increased demand. To make this possible, certain preconditions have been fulfilled over the past few days to allow medical disinfectants to be produced at the Ludwigshafen site itself. BASF has been granted a special permit by the Ministry of Health of Rhineland-Palatinate.

“We know from hospitals in the region that the supply situation for suitable disinfectants is very tight in some cases. We therefore want to help ensure availability,” says Dr. Uwe Liebelt, President European Site & Verbund Management and Site Manager Ludwigshafen.

BASF produces some of the raw materials that can be used to manufacture disinfectants at its Ludwigshafen site. Other necessary raw materials are purchased externally by BASF and used within BASF’s value-adding chain to manufacture other products. BASF has now reallocated several metric tons, in particular of isopropanol, to the production of hand sanitizers. In the past few days, the legal and technical prerequisites have been created for the production of disinfectants at the Ludwigshafen site.

“The spread of the novel coronavirus is a challenge for us as a society. We have considered how we can best help within the scope of our possibilities by supporting those who are now particularly important: hospital doctors and nursing staff. We would therefore like to thank the state government of Rhineland-Palatinate and the Federal Ministry of Health for rapidly reviewing and granting the necessary permits. As our production capabilities are very limited, we will initially only be able to supply hospitals in the Rhine-Neckar metropolitan region. In this way we hope to ease the overall demand situation,” said Michael Heinz, member of the Board of Executive Directors of BASF SE and Site Manager Ludwigshafen.

Hospitals in the Rhine-Neckar Metropolitan Region should contact BASF by writing to standortaktuell@basf.com.