ChiPros - New Production Facilities On-Stream
02/28/02 BASF has completed an ambitious investment program for the production of optically active intermediates to satisfy increasing demand by life science customers. The new plants are improvements of BASF's proprietary technology and remove limitations of the previously used facilities, thereby opening new opportunities for BASF to serve its customers worldwide.
Optically active intermediates are mainly used as building blocks or auxiliaries in the manufacture of pharmaceutical and agrochemical compounds. BASF uses the new brand ChiProsTM to market and differentiate its unique chiral intermediates portfolio.
Three new production plants for the manufacturing of ChiPros are now in operation:
- In Geismar, Louisiana, a proprietary biocatalytic enzymatic process is used in an optically active amine plant with an annual capacity of 2,500 tons. This dedicated plant produces a key component for BASF's herbicide OUTLOOKTM.
- In Ludwigshafen, Germany, the same technology is the basis for a multi-product cGMP-facility with a capacity exceeding 1,000 tons per year. This flexible plant makes available a broad product portfolio of optically active amines and is capable of manufacturing chiral alcohols as well.
- Also in Ludwigshafen, production of R-Mandelic acid has started in yet another multi-product plant. Again, a biocatalytic process is used to manufacture this versatile pharmaceutical intermediate. Similar hydroxy functional acids will soon be added to our portfolio.
These new ChiPros plants fit extremely well into the existing Verbund structures of BASF's Geismar and Ludwigshafen sites. With these state-of-the-art manufacturing facilities, BASF provides to its customers a broad portfolio of optically active intermediates in high chemical and optical purities. In many cases, ChiPros intermediates are tailor-made for BASF customers' new developmental applications and will be added to the portfolio as demand grows. Working in close cooperation with each of its customers, BASF is able to support their processes by timely supplying lab quantities up to large scale production volumes - from the first gram up to multi tons.
These new chemo-enzymatically produced intermediates represent valuable additions to the product portfolio of BASF, one of the world's leading suppliers of intermediates.
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