About BASF

BASF SE (German pronunciation: [beːaːɛsˈʔɛf] ^ⓘ), an initialism of its original name Badische Anilin- und Sodafabrik (German for 'Baden Aniline and Soda Factory'), is a European multinational company and the largest chemical producer in the world.^[2][3][4] Its headquarters are located in Ludwigshafen, Germany.

BASF comprises subsidiaries and joint ventures in more than 80 countries, operating six integrated production sites and 390 other production sites across Europe, Asia, Australia, the Americas and Africa.^[5] BASF has customers in over 190 countries and supplies products to a wide variety of industries. Despite its size and global presence, BASF has received relatively little public attention since it abandoned the manufacture and sale of BASF-branded consumer electronics products in the 1990s.^[6]

The company began as a dye manufacturer in 1865. Fritz Haber worked with Carl Bosch, one of its employees, to invent the Haber-Bosch process by 1912, after which the company grew rapidly. In 1925, the company merged with several other German chemical companies to become the chemicals conglomerate IG Farben. IG Farben would go on to play a major role in the economy of Nazi Germany. It extensively employed forced and slave labor during the Nazi period, and produced the notorious Zyklon B chemical used in The Holocaust. IG Farben was disestablished by the Allies in 1945. BASF was reconstituted from the remnants of IG Farben in 1952. It was part of the German economic miracle, and has since expanded considerably. It has received modern criticism for its poor environmental record.^{[citation needed]}

At the end of 2019, the company employed 117,628 people, with over 54,000 in Germany.^[7] In 2019, BASF posted sales of €59.3 billion and income from operations before special items of about €4.5 billion. Between 1990 and 2005, the company invested €5.6 billion in Asia, specifically in sites near Nanjing, Shanghai and Jiangmen in China and Mangalore in India.^[8] BASF is listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, London Stock Exchange, and Zurich Stock Exchange. The company delisted its ADR from the New York Stock Exchange in September 2007.^[9] The company is a component of the Euro Stoxx 50 stock market index.^[10][11]

History[edit]

BASF is an acronym for Badische Anilin- und Sodafabrik (German for 'Baden Aniline and Soda Factory'). It was founded by Friedrich Engelhorn on 6 April 1865 in Mannheim, in the German-speaking state of Baden. Engelhorn had been responsible for setting up a gasworks and street lighting for the town council in 1861. The gasworks produced tar as a by-product from coal, and Engelhorn used this to extract aniline for the production of dyes. BASF was set up in 1865, to produce other chemicals necessary for dye production, notably soda and acids. The plant, however, was erected on the other side of the Rhine river at Ludwigshafen because the town council of Mannheim was afraid that the air pollution from the chemical plant could bother the inhabitants of the town. In 1866, the dye production processes were also moved to the BASF site.^[12]