BASF has announced at a research press conference in late January that it intends to maintain a similar level of R&D spending this year. At €1.38 billion, the target spend is very close to that of both 2008 and 2009, encompassing both portfolio changes and customer-specific work. About 9,300 BASF employees work in R&D.

Research Executive Director Dr Andreas Kreimeyer commented: “Only with a continuous flow of innovations can we consistently use competitive advantages to achieve above-market organic growth. Continuity in research strategy is important both in good times and in times of crisis.”

The company has defined five ‘growth clusters’ for strategic corporate research that reflect global mega-trends and most of the R&D effort will be focused here: plant biotechnology, industrial biotechnology, nanotechnology, energy management and raw material change.

Kreimeyer added that the work must reflect the new paradigm in chemistry, in which success is driven not so much by new molecules as new effects, systems, components and functional materials. This will mean increasing collaboration with others across disciplines and internationally.

Among the ongoing examples of this that are already ongoing, he cited the Joint Innovation Lab at Ludwigshafen in organic electronics, a research initiative in biofilm prevention at Harvard and the Catalysis Research Laboratory (CaRLa) at, in which the State of Baden-Württemberg is also a stakeholder.

Launched three years ago and extended for five more years just recently, CaRLa involves joint research between BASF and Heidelberg University research in homogeneous catalysis. To date, it has worked on screening projects for new catalysts, including the development and improvement of catalysts for controlled hydrogenation of enones and for olefin metathesis. The first joint patent applications and publications have already taken place.