BASF continues strategic realignment of European styrenics business
From July 1st, 2004 BASF is to stop producing many of its polystyrene resin grades in Ludwigshafen as it withdraws about 100,000 metric tons of sales volume from the compounds market. In addition, the company's Styrolux® (SBS) plant will be mothballed in the last quarter of 2003. These measures are part of a strategy to concentrate styrenics production in high-efficiency world-scale plants.
Polystyrene - new services for customers
In future BASF will no longer manufacture polystyrene compounds or niche products, which include ready-coloured resins and those with customized properties. BASF will offer its customers technical assistance in switching to alternative products. From Q4 2003 a service package called Colorflexx(TM) will be available to processors to enable them to colour polystyrene resin in-house. Colorflexx-first introduced several months ago for BASF's Terluran® (ABS) customers in Europe-is based on a partnership between BASF and four leading suppliers of colour concentrates. Compounded BASF polystyrene will still be available, but only through licensed suppliers. BASF's business with polystyrene containing special additives is due to be sold.
Styrolux
The mothballing of the Styrolux® plant in Ludwigshafen will reduce capacity in Europe by 25 percent. More recently the plant had been used for pre-marketing the product in North America. The European market for this styrene copolymer will continue to be supplied from BASF's Styrolux facility in Antwerp; from 2004, the North American market will be supplied from a new world-scale plant in Altamira, Mexico, which will come on-stream at the end of 2003.
"These measures are being taken to strengthen our competitiveness in what is very much a commodity market. Moreover, with this capacity reduction, we are reacting on the oversupply and the unsatisfactory margins in the European polystyrene business", says Wilfried Haensel, head of BASF European styrenics business.
The restructuring, which will be concluded in mid-2004, will affect 187 jobs. However, under a recently renewed labour agreement for the Ludwigshafen site there will be no compulsory redundancies.
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