BASF

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BASF is the world’s largest chemical company. The company headquarters are in Ludwigshafen, Germany, along with their flagship site made up of over 350 plants. BASF has 112,617 employees worldwide, with over 52,000 employees in Germany alone. Table 1 shows BASF’s employee count by region. Over 60% of all BASF employees are in Europe. North America and Asia Pacific both make up approximately 15% of total employees each.

BASF operates six integrated sites and 380 additional production sites worldwide. BASF’s Ludwigshafen, Germany site is the world’s largest integrated chemical complex, and the company’s largest Verbund site. It has a total area of 10 km^2, a workforce of 33,761 employees and 160 production facilities. BASF’s second largest production site in in Antwerp with an area of 6 km^2 and about 3,296 employees. The Verbund site in Nanjing is a 50:50 venture between BASF and China Petroleum & Chemical Company, has an area of 2.2 km^2 and a workforce of about 1,860. Complementing the Nanjing site it the Kuantan site, with a total area of 2.85 km^2 and a workforce of 670 employees. The site in Freeport, Texas has an area of 1.64 km^2, a workforce of 689 and consists of 24 productions facilities. The Geismar, Louisiana site has an area of 9.27 km^2, approximately 810 employees and 22 production facilities.
Image 1: Map of BASF Verbund Sites Worldwide

http://www.basf.com/group/corporate/en/about-basf/profile/verbund/verbund-sites

BASF is structured into four regions: Europe, North America, Asia Pacific, and South America – Africa - Middle East. For the third quarter of 2013, BASF reported a total sales of $23,940 million. Table 2 show the 3rd quarter 2013 total sales, and percent of total, for each of BASF’s four regions. O...

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Increased investment in the United States represents an opportunity for substantial cost savings and access to a growing market, but there is also significant risk. More manufacturing firms are moving operations to the United States to take advantage of low natural gas and energy cost. The United States has also considered drastic increases in exports of natural gas. These factors may cause a narrowing of the gap in energy cost by driving up the prices in the United States and pushing down the prices in Europe and Asia. This could potentially negate the cost benefits BASF would realize from increasing operations in the United States. Not only would BASF loose the advantage of lower cost energy, but they could see a significant increase in total cost. This would be largely due to the increased transportation costs from moving products between the U.S. and Europe.

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