BASF plans to build an engineering plastics compounding plant and a thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) plant at the its proposed integrated chemical production (“Verbund”) site in Zhanjiang, Guangdong province, China. These plants will be the first to come onstream at the Verbund site. The investment is estimated up to US$10 billion upon completion. The site would be the third-largest BASF site worldwide, following Ludwigshafen in Germany, and Antwerp in Belgium.

The Verbund site would be operated under the sole responsibility of BASF. For this, the company has founded the wholly-owned subsidiary BASF Integrated Site (Guangdong) Co. Ltd (BIG). BASF signed the first Memorandum of Understanding for the Verbund site with the Guangdong Provincial Government in Berlin, Germany, in July 2018. In January 2019, they signed a Framework Agreement setting out further details of the plan.

By 2022, the new engineering plastics compounding plant will supply an additional capacity of 60,000 metric tons per year of BASF engineering plastics compounds in China. This will bring the total BASF capacity of these products in Asia Pacific to 290,000 metric tons per year.

• BASF SE, Ludwigshafen, Germany