German chemical major BASF revealed its plans to expand its offerings for the automotive industry in India with investments in plants and technology. The company is setting up a new engineering plastic compounding plant at Thane near Mumbai and tripling the capacity of its catalyst plant in Chennai. The company is planning investments in Indian facility keeping the boom in the Indian automotive sector in mind.

The company is eyeing an initial capacity of 9,000 tonne at the Thane plant. The plant is expected to be operational by the second quarter of 2009. The group has also plans to set up a computer-aided engineering (CAE) lab for engineering plastics in Thane. The expansion programme at Chennai is also expected to be completed around the same time.

Further, BASF Coatings commissioned a new Refinish Color Lab at Mangalore in February 2008, and is expanding its e-coat facility, which is expected to be completed by end of 2008.

BASF is the world’s leading chemical company. Its portfolio ranges from oil and gas to chemicals, plastics, performance products, agricultural products and fine chemicals. The company has more than 95,000 employees and posted sales of almost €58 billion in 2007.