BASF Report 2021

Organization of the BASF Group

We take a differentiated approach to steering our businesses according to market-specific requirements and the competitive environment. We provide a high level of transparency around the results of our segments and show the importance of the Verbund and value chains to our business success. BASF aims to differentiate its businesses from their competitors and establish a high-performance organization to enable BASF to be successful in an increasingly competitive market environment.

The operating divisions, the service units, the regions and the corporate center form the cornerstones of the BASF organization, in line with the corporate strategy. As part of the implementation of our strategy, we streamlined our administration, sharpened the roles of services and regions, and simplified procedures and processes. The organizational realignment created the conditions for greater customer proximity, increased competitiveness and profitable growth.

The divisions bear strategic and operational responsibility here and are organized according to sectors or products. They manage the 50 global and regional business units and develop strategies for 75 strategic business units.

The regional and country units represent BASF locally and support the growth of business units with local proximity to customers. For financial reporting purposes, we organize the regional divisions into four regions: Europe, North America, Asia Pacific, and South America, Africa and Middle East.

Our research is currently divided into three global divisions: Process Research & Chemical Engineering, Advanced Materials & Systems Research and Bioscience Research. To strengthen our innovation capabilities, we will reorganize our global research activities in 2022 and align them even more closely with the needs of our customers. To this end, we will integrate downstream research into the divisions and bundle activities with broad relevance in a research unit. This unit will continue to be globally positioned with research centers in Europe, North America and Asia Pacific.

Five service units provide competitive services for the operating divisions and sites: Global Engineering Services, Global Digital Services, Global Procurement, European Site & Verbund Management, Global Business Services (finance, human resources, environmental protection, health and safety, intellectual property, communications, procurement, supply chain and inhouse consulting services).

Following the bundling of services and resources and the implementation of a wide-ranging digitalization strategy, the number of employees in the Global Business Services unit worldwide will decline by up to 2,000 by the end of 2022 compared with baseline 2019. From 2023 onward, the division expects to achieve annual cost savings of over €200 million.

The Corporate Center supports the Board of Executive Directors in steering the company as a whole. These include central tasks from the following areas: strategy, finance and controlling, compliance and law, tax, environmental protection, health and safety, human resources, communications, investor relations and internal audit.

Our Excellence Program aimed to contribute €2 billion to EBITDA annually until the end of 2021 onward compared with baseline 2018. We met this target in 2021. As planned, this was partly due to the reduction of more than 6,000 positions worldwide until the end of 2021. This decrease resulted from the organizational simplification and from efficiency gains in administration, the service units and the operating divisions.

For more information on the products and services offered by the segments, see:

Value chain
A value chain describes the successive steps in a production process: from raw materials through various intermediate steps, such as transportation and production, to the finished product.
Verbund
In the BASF Verbund, plants are intelligently connected. In this system, chemical processes consume less energy, produce higher product yields and conserve resources. The by-products of one plant serve as feedstock elsewhere, creating efficient value chains – from basic chemicals to high value-added solutions such as coatings or crop protection products. Our Verbund concept – realized in production, technologies, the market and digitalization – enables innovative solutions for a sustainable future.