BASF is stepping up its regional research and development (R&D) activities for automotive coatings at the BASF Innovation Campus Asia Pacific in Shanghai, China. At the new state-of-the-art coatings and coating resins laboratories, the company’s R&D team innovates to address regional automotive customers’ growing demands for high-performance, quality and flexible coatings solutions with a lower environmental impact.

“We anticipated the significant market shift of the automotive industry, as well as the shift of R&D capacities of our customers to Asia,” said Peter Fischer, BASF senior vice president, Coatings Solutions, Asia Pacific. “One key enabler for future success is the globalization of our R&D landscape and to establish an organization to meet future market needs. We plan to increase our R&D personnel in Asia Pacific, mostly in China.”

With a high level of expertise and cutting-edge facilities, the new laboratories focus on R&D activities for coating formulations, resins, polymer synthesis, as well as coating applications for spray-coats and electro deposition coatings. The latest coating application technology also ensures that customers’ production line conditions can be simulated.

In general, demand for sustainable and high-performance coatings that reduce volatile organic compounds in the automotive industry is on the rise.

“We have built up significant R&D resources at the Innovation Campus in Shanghai, where many of our innovations are developed to benefit our customers. We will further invest and develop new solutions to address growing demand of our customers for products that are sustainable, durable and aesthetically pleasing,” added Rafael Bautista Mester, BASF head of R&D and Technology Management, Coatings Solutions Asia Pacific. “Bringing together our R&D talent, we are working on global and regional projects that focus on researching and developing new and improved products, applications and alternative technologies.”