News Releases

Shanghai, China – April 14, 2025 – Cellasto^®, the world leader in Noise, Vibration and Harshness (NVH) components, is investing roughly €60 million to establish a second plant in Shanghai, China. This production expansion aims to capitalize on China’s booming electric vehicle market. The new facility will feature advanced mold lines, resulting in a capacity increase of nearly 70%, with operations expected to start in 2027. A commencement ceremony was held on April 14^th to celebrate this expansion.

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Lemfoerde, Germany – April 2, 2025 – At CHINAPLAS 2025, BASF will present the Pro-Flex^® Terra foot prosthesis, co-created with the leading global prosthetic provider, Össur. Cellasto^®’s cutting-edge material solution, characterized by progressive stiffness and high impact strength, combines softness and flexibility with extraordinary energy return, allowing the Pro-Flex^® Terra foot prosthesis to embody an intuitive response behavior and replicate closely the human muscle-tendon motion.

For challenging E&E components, BASF has now developed the high-flow Ultrason® D 1010 G6 U40. The blend based on polyethersulfone (PESU) is optimized to meet special needs for easy injection molding of energy-efficient parts in data and energy transmission, smart electronics and e-mobility. Because of its excellent flowability at lower processing temperatures the new BASF thermoplastic gives manufacturers greater flexibility when designing sophisticated switches, circuit breakers and sensors as well as IGBTs and semi-conductor parts like burn-in test sockets. Ultrason® D 1010 G6 U40 shows stable electrical properties at elevated temperatures with a high relative thermal index (RTI) and a higher comparative tracking index (CTI) than polyetherimide (PEI) and polyphenylenesulfide (PPS).

All BASF's European production sites for engineering plastics, polystyrene, expandable polystyrene, polyurethane, thermoplastics polyurethanes, polyamides and specialty polymers are now certified by independent third parties according to the Operation Clean Sweep ^® (OCS) standard. "With the successful certification of the polyamide production in Antwerp, the final milestone of this important project has been reached. We are delighted with this great achievement together with all teams involved in the proper handling of plastic pellets," says Sophie Van Dyck, Vice President Operations Polyamides & Precursors Antwerp. In total, 16 production plants for plastic pellets were certified at six BASF production sites in Europe.

For durable parts requiring special thermal management, BASF expands its portfolio of Ultramid® Advanced T1000. The polyphthalamide (PPA) range based on polyamide 6T/6I now also includes optimized grades with high hydrolysis resistance (HR) and high purity (EQ = electronic quality). This addresses the increasing needs of the automotive industry for combustion engines and electric motors with inverters or fuel cells showing a stable, long-term performance at high power output in presence of different cooling media. The new HR and EQ grades are tailored to combine high strength and stiffness at elevated temperatures with excellent creep strength and resistance against cooling media - outperforming standard polyamides and many other PPAs on the market.