BASF sets targets for growth in China

BASF has set a goal of winning 10% of its sales and profits in China by 2010, the company’s chairman Juergen Hambrecht told a press conference in Nanjing yesterday.

The company’s senior team was assembled before the opening ceremony for the $2.9bn (E2.4bn) BASF-YPC joint venture complex at the city to be held tomorrow. The opening is to be held exactly four years since ground was first broken on the 1.7 million tpa petrochemical complex which is built around a world scale 600,000 tpa cracker and includes a number of downstream units including a 400,000 tpa polyethylene plant. Since 1990, the German chemicals group has committed E5.6bn to its Asian build up. A further E1bn is to be added to this total, it emerged this week.