BASF opens product development facility in Malaysia

26 March 2007 – BASF has opened a new product development centre at its engineering plastics compounding site in Pasir Gudang, Malaysia.

The new facility is to focus on the development of innovative products tailored to Asia Pacific market requirements. In Asia, BASF has also established technical centres in Japan, South Korea and China as part of the German chemicals firm’s integrated global research and development network.

“Qualified and highly experienced experts in the fields of chemistry and engineering plastics have been recruited in order to form the best team,” said Hermann Althoff, Asia Pacific group vice president of BASF’s engineering plastics division.

At the same time, BASF Petronas Chemicals (BPC) has announced the scheduling of a technical turnaround of their acrylics complex in Malaysia – BPC is a joint venture between BASF (60%) and Malaysia’s Petronas (40%).

The shutdown time is scheduled to start early April and should last 60 days while the supply to contractual customers will not be affected, according to BASF.

The BPC facility launched production in April 2000, producing 160,000tpa capacity of crude acrylic acid sold as glacial acrylic acid, butylacrylate and 2-ethylhexylacrylate.