Dr. Andreas Kreimeyer, member of the Board of Executive Directors of BASF SE and Research Executive Director, announced at the Research Press Conference held in Ludwigshafen that the company’s research Verbund has “increased its innovative strength to a new level of performance in 2012,” adding that in the same year, BASF launched more than 250 new products onto the market. “If we also include new formulations and optimised products, the total actually runs to several thousand,” he said.

In 2020, BASF aims to achieve sales of EUR30 billion from new products that have been on the market for less than ten years.

The company said that its innovative strength is also reflected in the Patent Asset Index of the WHU – Otto Beisheim School of Management, Vallendar, Germany. This index compares the effects of the patent portfolio on the competitiveness and innovative strength of companies.

In 2012, BASF took first place in the Patent Asset Index in the chemical industry for the fourth consecutive time, and during the same year, the chemicals firm increased its research and development expenditures to EUR1.7 billion from EUR1.6 billion in 2011. At present around 10,500 employees are working in international and interdisciplinary teams on about 3,000 projects worldwide.

Meanwhile, BASF plans to conduct half of its research outside Europe and in order to achieve this, the company opened seven new laboratories in Asia and the US and also expanded laboratories worldwide in 2012.

The proportion of research activities outside of Europe has increased from 24% in 2011 to 27% in 2012. “One of last year’s highlights was the inauguration of our Innovation Campus Asia Pacific at BASF’s new Greater China headquarters in Shanghai,” said Kreimeyer. With 450 research and development scientists, this is already BASF’s largest research site in Asia.

The company also strengthened its global research network with more than 600 interdisciplinary and international cooperations, including top universities, research institutes and companies involved in numerous individual projects.

BASF recently inaugurated the research initiative “North American Center for Research on Advanced Materials,” launching several research projects in the material sciences field with partners in the United States.

“These joint research activities are our response to an important trend,” explained Kreimeyer. “As well as developing and producing molecules, we put together a package of chemistry combined with application know-how and services tailored to meet our customers’ requirements.”

Other segments that BASF engages its R&D resources into are the wind power, solar energy, mobile storage technologies; stationary storage technologies, electric power transmission with superconductors, magnetocaloric materials, and light-emitting dyes for OLEDs.