On June 16, BASF inaugurated its application center for metal surface treatment (MST), located in the Innovation Campus Shanghai, China. This first-of-its-kind lab and competence center for BASF’s Care Chemicals division in Asia will enable quicker, collaborative innovation with customers and deliver sustainable additives to the MST industry. Innovation pipelines in applications for new and existing products have been defined for the lab, with an imperative on more environmentally friendly products and emerging technologies.

“Though MST is a traditional industry, there is still a lot of room for innovation, especially when it comes to finding solutions in response to regulatory changes as well as technology upgrades that the industry has seen in the recent years,” said Dr. Zhen Yu QIAN, Head of Global Development & Innovation, Home Care, I&I and Industrial Formulators Asia Pacific at BASF. “One example is the recent launch of Lutron? POP, a sustainable additive, to replace chrome acid in plastic pretreatment, which will help our customers move to more environmentally friendly surface treatment, beyond chromium (VI).”  

The new application center is located in BASF’s Innovation Campus Shanghai, the largest R&D site of BASF in Asia Pacific. With this lab, BASF aims to offer advanced and more agile technical service to customers on existing products, along with innovations and applications being planned.

“Considering that more than half of the world’s metal plating industry is based in Asia, this new global competence center is an important, strategic step for us. We plan to drive more new applications and innovation projects in the future from Asia. We are also convinced that with our wide range of specialty chemicals offerings and professional R&D platform we can contribute substantially to the electrical and electronics (E&E) value chain,” said Dr. Jianwen MAO, Vice President, Home Care, I&I and Industrial Formulators Asia Pacific at BASF.

Metal surface treatment is essential in many industries and is a time-tested process in major downstream sectors including automotive, electrical and electronics and steel production. It offers properties like corrosion protection, hardness improvement, and glossy texture.