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BASF
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History
BASF in Ludwigshafen
BASF was founded on 6 April 1865 in Mannheim, in the state of Baden-Württemberg, Germany, by Friedrich Engelhorn. He had been responsible for setting up a gasworks and street lighting for the town council in 1861. The gasworks produced tar as a byproduct, and Engelhorn used this 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 of the chemical plant could bother the inhabitants of the town. In 1866 the dye production processes were also moved to the BASF site.[4]
Dyes
The discovery in 1856 by William Henry Perkin that aniline could be used to make intense colouring agents had led to the commercial production of synthetic dyes in England from aniline extracted from coal tar. BASF recruited Heinrich Caro, a German chemist with experience of the dyestuffs industry in England. Caro developed a synthesis for alizarin (a natural pigment in madder), and applied for a British patent on 25 June 1869. Coincidentally Perkin applied for a virtually identical patent on 26 June 1869, and the two companies came to a mutual commercial agreement about the process.[4]
Further patents were granted for the synthesis of methylene blue and eosin, and in 1880 research began to try to find a synthetic process for indigo dye, though this was not successfully brought to the market until 1897. In 1901, some 80% of the BASF production was dyestuffs.[4]
Soda
Sodium carbonate (soda) was produced by the Leblanc process until 1880, when the much cheaper Solvay process became available. BASF ceased to make its own and bought it from theSolvay company thereafter.[4]
Sulfuric acid
Sulfuric acid was initially produced by the Lead chamber process, but in 1890 a unit using the Contact process was brought on stream, producing the acid at higher concentration (98% instead of 80%) and at lower cost. This followed extensive research and development by Rudolf Knietsch, for which he received the Liebig Medal in 1904.[4]
Ammonia
The development of the Haber process from 1908 to 1912 made it possible to synthesize ammonia (a major industrial chemical as the primary source of nitrogen), and, after acquiring exclusive rights to the process, in 1913 BASF started a new production plant in Oppau, adding fertilizers to its product range. BASF also acquired and began mining anhydrite for gypsum at the Kohnsteinin 1917.[5]
[edit]IG Farben
As a result of this monopoly, BASF was able to start operations at a new site in Leuna in 1916, where explosives were produced during the First World War. On September 21, 1921, an explosion occurred in Oppau, killing 565 people. The Oppau explosion was the biggest catastrophe in German industrial history. Under the leadership of Carl Bosch, BASF founded IG Farben with Hoechst,Bayer, and three other companies, thus losing its independence. BASF was the nominal survivor, as all shares were exchanged for BASF shares prior to the merger. Rubber, fuels, and coatingswere added to the product range. Following the appointment of Adolf Hitler as Chancellor in 1933, IG Farben cooperated with the Nazi regime, profiting from guaranteed volumes and prices, and from the slave labor provided by the government's concentration camps. IG Farben also achieved notoriety owing to its production of Zyklon-B, the lethal gas used in Nazi extermination camps. In 1935, IG Farben and AEG presented the magnetophon – the first tape recorder – at the Radio Exhibition in Berlin.[6]
BASF Portsmouth Site in the West Norfolk area of Portsmouth, Virginia. The plant is served by the Commonwealth Railway.
World War II
This section requires expansion.
The Ludwigshafen site was almost completely destroyed during the Second World War and was subsequently rebuilt. The allies dissolved IG Farben in November 1945.
BASF refounded
On July 28 1948, an explosion in which 207 people died occurred in Ludwigshafen. In 1952, BASF was refounded under its own name following the efforts ofCarl Wurster.[7] With the German economic miracle in the 1950s, BASF added synthetics such as nylon to its product range. BASF developed polystyrene in the 1930s and invented Styropor in 1951.
Production abroad
In the 1960s, production abroad was expanded and plants were built in Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, France, United Kingdom, India, Italy, Japan,Mexico, Spain and the United States. Following a change in corporate strategy in 1965, greater emphasis was placed on higher-value products such as coatings, pharmaceuticals, pesticides and fertilizers. Following German reunification, BASF acquired a site in Schwarzheide, eastern Germany, on October 25 1990.
Takeovers
In 1968 BASF (together with Bayer AG) bought the German coatings company Herbol. BASF completely took over the Herbol branches in Cologne and Würzburg in 1970. Under new management the renewal and expansion of the trademark continued. After an extensive reorganisation and an increasing international orientation of the coatings business Herbol became part of the new founded Deco GmbH in 1997.
In 1999 the European coatings business of BASF was taken over by AkzoNobel. On May 30, 2006, BASF bought the Engelhard Corporation for 4.8 billion USD. This takeover is the largest takeover in the company's history. BASF is now the world's largest manufacturer of catalytic converters.