As a regional service hub, BASF South East Asia manages and provides value-added services in logistics distribution, marketing, finance and treasury, information technology and applications for BASF subsidiaries in the entire Asia Pacific region.

Singapore is also the location for BASF’s major distribution hub in the region. The Regional Distribution Center (RDC), opened in 1998, ensures more efficient, reliable and speedier delivery of goods from BASF’s worldwide and Asia plants to customers at competitive costs. Today, the RDC serves more than 50 ports in all countries in Asia from Singapore, with more than 1000 products delivered from BASF global production network. The RDC has been able to optimize inventory levels while reducing the lead-time required to service customers by as much as 60%.

In Singapore, BASF South East Asia has a 50:50 manufacturing joint venture with Shell Chemicals, called ELLBA Eastern Pte Ltd, for the production of styrene monomer and propylene oxide (SM/PO). With more than US$500 million invested, ELLBA Eastern is a worldscale SMPO plant on Jurong Island. It started-up in 2002 and is the largest SMPO facility in Asia with a capacity of 550,000 tons per year of SM and 250,000 tons per year of PO.

In 2005, BASF acquired the electronics chemical business of Merck. In Singapore, this involved one site in Tuas, which includes a wholly-owned subsidiary as well as a joint venture (Santoku BASF). Products range from high-purity process chemicals to innovative special mixtures. Electronic chemicals are mainly used by the flat panel display industry and the semiconductor industry for microchip production.