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BASF

German chemical plant blast toll rises to four

The BASF chemical giant on Saturday said a firefighter injured in an explosion at its plant in western Germany earlier this month had died, pushing the death toll up to four.

Published: 30 October 2016 12:04 CET
German chemical plant blast toll rises to four
Seven people were critically injured in the October 17 blast. Photo: Ulli Ziegenfuss / dpa / AFP

“This morning, one of the BASF firefighters who was critically injured in the October 17 explosion … succumbed to his wounds,” BASF said in a statement.

An explosion followed by a fire rocked the chemical giant's plant in Ludwigshafen, where 36,000 people work.

Another seven people were critically injured and 22 others slightly wounded.

BASF employs over 100,000 people around the world and had sales of more than 70 billion euros ($76.77 billion) in 2015.

The firm's worst accidents lie many decades in the past, including a 1921 explosion in a Ludwigshafen ammonia factory that killed 585 people and a 1948 accident on the same site in which 207 were killed and 3,800 injured.

CARS

German chemical giant BASF to make car battery parts near Tesla Berlin site

German chemical giant BASF says it will build a factory making key components for electric car batteries in Brandenburg state, not far from Tesla's first European "Gigafactory" just outside Berlin.

Published: 12 February 2020 15:35 CET
Updated: 12 February 2020 17:35 CET
German chemical giant BASF to make car battery parts near Tesla Berlin site
Photo: DPA

Set for a site in Schwarzheide, 100 kilometres (62 miles) from the planned Tesla plant, BASF's factory “will produce cathode active materials with an initial capacity enabling the supply of around 400,000 full electric vehicles per year,” the company said in a statement.

It did not immediately say how many jobs would be created.

The Brandenburg unit will work in tandem with a plant in Finland producing precursors for the cathodes, the part of a battery cell that passes current to the rest of the electrical circuit.

Both are scheduled to come online in 2022.

READ ALSO: Protests as Tesla receives approval for factory purchase near Berlin

The project “is part of our first joint European project on battery cell production,” German Economy Minister Peter Altmaier said in a statement.

Several European Union member states, led by Germany and France, have offered billions in subsidies to build up an “Airbus of batteries”, seeing the globally competitive pan-European aircraft builder as a model for future industries.

Batteries make up around 40 percent of the value of an electric car, but are currently made by companies in South Korea, China and Japan.

Although Europe's industrial giants fear for their business models built in the combustion engine age, none was prepared to take the plunge into cell-making without government help.

Across Germany in Kaiserslautern, France's Peugeot now plans a two-billion-euro ($2.2 billion) battery cell production site that will supply batteries for up to 500,000 vehicles a year by 2024.

READ ALSO: Seven WWII bombs defused at Tesla's factory site near Berlin

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