German chemical giant BASF has combined its water business with its oilfield and mining businesses as from 1 April 2013 to increase efficiency and support growth.
BASF‘s water business will in future concentrate fully on providing innovative chemical solutions to the water market. To this end, the company is planning to divest its service-oriented industrial water management business, located in Lyon, France, to a strategic partner capable of expanding the business further.
The company expects to reduce its workforce by about 215 positions worldwide, mostly at the Bradford and Grimsby, UK sites.
BASF offers a wide range of products for key processes of industrial and municipal water treatment, products for the drilling and completion of oil wells and mineral processing reagents for the mining industry. All three businesses include parts of the polyacrylamide (PAM) value chain.
With the combination of these businesses BASF is taking various steps to increase efficiency and operational excellence in its PAM operations. Significant investments are planned to upgrade the performance of existing production plants, create additional capacity, strengthen R&D efforts and establish a new bio-acrylamide process for further cost optimization.
“By combining the strengths of these businesses, sharpening our focused market approach and at the same time increasing operational and innovation excellence, we are in a good position to advance innovative solutions to the water, oilfield and mining industries,” said Hans W Reiners, president of BASF’s Performance Chemicals division.