BASF Opens Chemical Catalysts Manufacturing Plant in Shanghai
Year:2017 ISSUE:24
COLUMN:ECONOMY AND BUSINESS
Click:316    DateTime:Jan.08,2018
BASF Opens Chemical Catalysts Manufacturing Plant in Shanghai

BASF recently celebrated the official opening of its new, world-scale chemical catalysts manufacturing plant in Caojing, Shanghai, China. The new plant is BASF’s first chemical catalysts manufacturing facility in the Asia Pacific region.
The BASF wholly-owned plant is located in the Shanghai Chemical Industry Park (SCIP) in Caojing. It will serve the growing chemical industry in China and around the Asia Pacific region, with base metal catalysts and absorbents. The plant will be highly automated and energy efficient.
“The start of our new production plant for chemical catalysts in Shanghai represents a milestone for our process catalysts business. Sixty percent of the world’s chemical production will happen in Asia by 2020, with more than half of this in China,” said Detlef Ruff, BASF’s Senior Vice President, Process Catalysts.
“Together with our partners, BASF has invested RMB19.7 billion as of the end of 2016 (approximately Euro 2.5 billion) in state-of-the-art production located in Caojing. What we produce here directly supports the development and modernization of Chinese industry.
Leveraging experience from the eleven chemical catalyst manufacturing sites around the world, the new plant will use cutting-edge production technologies to manufacture innovative catalysts and adsorbents. These are used, for example, in the production of fatty alcohols, styrene, butanediol. BASF adsorbents are used in many applications to remove impurities from product streams, for example to purify olefins. Butanediol is a raw material in the production of THF and poly-THF (Spandex), while poly butylene terephthalate (PBT) is used predominantly in engineering polymers. Styrene is for example polymerized into polystyrene, which finds applications in packaging or insulation for buildings. Fatty alcohols are used as detergents and surfactants, typically used in cosmetics and in the food industry.
The new site will be supported by the new Process Catalyst R&D Center, located within the BASF Innovation Campus Asia Pacific in Pudong, Shanghai, which is focusing on the development of new process catalyst to meet specific needs in Asia. With strong research competencies in catalyst preparation, scaling and performance evaluation, this R&D center will further strengthen the collaboration with partners in the region, and will provide support for the new chemical catalyst manufacturing site.