MOSCOW (MRC) -- BASF says it will reduce the number of employees in its global business services unit, which it established at the start of this year, by up to 2,000, almost 24% of the unit's total, by the end of 2022, said Chemweek.
The decision follows the bundling of services and resources and the implementation of a wide-ranging digitalization strategy, BASF says.
From 2023, the unit expects to achieve annualized cost savings of more than EUR200 million (USD235 million) from the move, the company says. Details of the planned worldwide workforce reduction will be worked out in the coming months with employee representatives involved, according to local rules and regulations, it says.
"Overall, with these planned measures, we will make a considerable contribution to BASF group’s efficiency," says Marc Ehrhardt, head/global business services at BASF. As part of the restructuring, more services than before will be bundled in hubs, which will offer as many services as possible for the units in the BASF group, the company says.
As MRC wrote before, BASF says it is investing EUR16.0 million (USD18.9 million) into Pyrum Innovations (Dillingen, Germany), a technology company specialized in the pyrolysis of waste tires. The investment will support the expansion of Pyrum’s pyrolysis plant at Dillingen and the further rollout of the technology, the company says. BASF and Pyrum anticipate that production capacities of up to 100,000 metric tons of pyrolysis oil derived from waste tires could be built up within the coming years together with additional partners. BASF will use the pyrolysis oil from end-of-life tires as an additional raw material source next to oil from mixed plastic waste, the use of which is the long-term focus of the company’s ChemCycling project.
As MRC reported earlier, BASF has restarted its No. 1 steam cracker in Germany following a maintenance turnaorund. Thus, the company resumed operations at the plant on September 30, 2019. The plant was shut for maintenance in mid-August, 2019. Located at Ludwigshafen in Germany, the No. 1 cracker has an ethylene production capacity of 235,000 mt/year and a propylene production capacity of 125,000 mt/year.
Ethylene and propylene are feedstocks for producing PE and polypropylene (PP).
According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's overall PE production totalled 1,712,400 tonnes in the first seven months of 2020, up by 58% year on year. Linear low density polyethylene (LLDPE) accounted for the greatest increase in the output. At the same time, overall PP production in Russia increased in January-July 2020 by 24% year on year to 1,063,700 tonne. ZapSibNeftekhim accounted for the main increase in the output.
BASF’s global business services unit was established on 1 January 2020 as part of the implementation of BASF’s corporate strategy. As of that date, about 8,400 employees worldwide transferred to the new unit and since then have been providing services for BASF’s other business units, ranging from financial and logistical processes to services in the areas of communication, human resources, environment, health and safety, the company says.
MRC