Our EHSQ Management Systems

Safety and quality are our number one priorities. That is why we have established comprehensive management and control systems. Our Responsible Care Management System comprises the global directives, standards and procedures for environmental protection, health and safety (EHS). Our Quality Management System aims to ensure the high quality of our products, processes and services and enable our employees to best meet our customers’ needs.

Responsible Care Management System

BASF is actively involved in the International Council of Chemical Associations’ global Responsible Care^® initiative. Our Responsible Care Management System covers the environmental protection, health and safety aspects that we have identified as material at different stages of our value chain – from the transportation of raw materials to production at our plants, activities at our sites and warehouses, and distribution of our products down to our cus­tomers’ application of our products. The Environmental Protection, Health, Safety and Quality unit in the Corporate Center defines Group-wide management and control systems and monitors compliance with internal requirements and legal regulations, while the sites and Group companies implement these requirements locally. Our global network enables information and insights to be shared across the BASF Group on an ongoing basis.

Our policies and requirements are continuously updated. We also maintain dialog with government institutions, associations and international organizations for this reason. We set ourselves ambitious goals for environmental protection, health and safety. We regularly review our performance and progress with audits. We assess the potential risks and weaknesses of all our major activities – from research and development and production to logistics – and the potential effects of these on the safety and security of our employees, plants, the environment and our surroundings. We use databases to record accidents, near misses and safety-related incidents at our sites as well as along our transportation routes. This documentation helps us to continuously improve. Appropriate measures are derived according to specific cause analyses.

• More information on Responsible Care^®

Quality Management System

Our Quality Management System comprises our EHSQ policy as well as further standards, guidelines and processes for quality management along the value chain. Our Quality Management System is risk-based, process-oriented and focused on customer satisfaction. Its mandatory elements are set out in a Corporate Requirement. These include core processes such as nonconformance management, the procedure for product recalls, change management and the performance of internal audits. Local implementation of the central requirements defined by the Environmental Protection, Health, Safety and Quality unit in the Corporate Center is the responsibility of our business units and sites.

Responsible Care audits

Regular audits help ensure that our safety, security, health and environmental protection standards are met. We conduct regular audits every three to six years at all BASF sites and at companies in which BASF is a majority shareholder. We take a risk-based approach here. An audit database ensures that all sites and plants worldwide are regularly audited. We have defined our regulations for Respon­sible Care audits in a global Corporate Requirement. The Board of Executive Directors is regularly informed about the results of the audits.

Newly acquired sites and companies are generally audited for the first time after the integration phase is complete, generally within one to two years depending on complexity and size.

During our audits, we create a safety and environmental profile that shows if we are properly addressing the hazard potential. If this is not the case, we agree on corrective measures to be implemented within a certain time frame depending on the identified hazard potential. We monitor this in follow-up audits, among other things.

In the BASF Group in 2022, 115 environmental and safety audits were conducted at 73 sites (2021: 143 audits at 71 sites). The sites were audited based on their individual risk profile. Auditing of the sites acquired from Solvay started as planned in 2022 but will need to continue in 2023 due to local coronavirus restrictions. In addition, 16 sites were audited on occupational medicine and health protection (2021: 13). Online audits were conducted for four of these sites. These remote audits focused on documented processes and management systems.

• More information on occupational and process safety and health protection

External certification

We pursue a decentralized certification approach for our business units and Group companies. This takes into account local needs, internal and legal requirements, and our customers’ requirements.

Our Responsible Care audit system complies with the ISO 19011 standard and is certified according to ISO 9001. Worldwide, 132 BASF production sites are certified in accordance with ISO 14001 (2021: 130). In addition, 59 sites worldwide are certified in accordance with ISO 45001 (2021: 54). Several BASF sites also have an ISO 17020-accredited inspection body for user inspection or an ISO 17025-accredited analytical laboratory for environmental emissions analyses.

Based on our customers’ requirements, quality management at our production sites is generally certified according to external international standards such as ISO 9001, GMP, FAMI QS or IATF 16949.

Costs and provisions

We continually invest in reducing the impact of our actions on the environment. We also establish appropriate provisions for environmental protection measures and the remediation of active and former sites.

For more information, see:

• Note 9
• Note 23