 "BASF Innovation Campus Asia Pacific in Shanghai")
BASF is stepping up its regional research and development (R&D) activities for automotive coatings in a new platform at the BASF Innovation Campus Asia Pacific in Shanghai, China. At these coatings and coating resins laboratories, the company’s R&D team is innovating to address regional automotive customers’ growing demands for high-performance, quality and flexible coatings solutions with a lower environmental impact.
“We anticipated early the growth potential of the automotive industry in Asia, as well as the build-up of R&D capacities of our customers. One key enabler for future success is the globalisation of our R&D landscape and to establish an organisation to meet future market needs. That is what we did. We target to increase our R&D personnel in Asia Pacific, mostly in China,” said Peter Fischer, senior vice president, coatings solutions, Asia Pacific, BASF.
With high level of expertise and cutting-edge facilities, the new laboratories focus on R&D activities for coating formulations, resins, polymer synthesis, as well as coating applications for spray-coats and electro-deposition coatings. Latest coating application technologies also ensures that customer’s production line conditions can be simulated, creating superior values to customers.
In general, demand for sustainable and high-performance coatings that reduce volatile organic compounds in the automotive industry is on the rise. “We have built up significant R&D resources at the Innovation Campus in Shanghai, where many of our innovations are developed to benefit our customers. We will further invest and come up with new solutions that address growing demand of our customers for products that are sustainable, durable and esthetically pleasing,” added Rafael Bautista Mester, head of R&D and technology management, coatings solutions Asia Pacific, BASF.
