BASF has started production at its new specialty amines plant in Ludwigshafen, Germany. The multi-product facility can manufacture about 12,000 t/y of around 15 amines for uses in the construction, automotive, crop protection and pharmaceutical industries.

“The special plant structure allows us to react flexibly to changes in the need for the various products. In addition, we can also produce commercial quantities of products from our innovation pipeline here,” said Christoph Wegner, senior vice president heading the Amines Europe business unit within BASF’s Intermediates division.

“Being integrated into the BASF Verbund at the Ludwigshafen site also allows us to offer our customers, apart from research, the scale-up services through a pilot plant, all the way to the new multi-product plant,” Wegner added.

BASF produces approximately 200 different amines from plants in Ludwigshafen and Schwarzheide, Germany; Antwerp, Belgium; Geismar, Louisiana, USA and Nanjing, China. In 2014, the German group announced plans to build another multi-product specialty amines unit at Nanjing, which is also due to start up before the end of this year.