BASF Balances Circular-Materials R&D With a Taiwan Chip-Materials Push
Published on 10/21/2026 at 19:11 | Editorial boerse-global.de
BASF has spent the past few days sketching out four separate initiatives, and the gap between them is as instructive as the plans themselves. Two are exploratory recycling ventures at home in Germany; two are growth and consolidation moves abroad. What unites them is a common thread of squeezing more out of existing production capacity — but only one of the four has actually been proven to work outside the laboratory.
Pillow Foam Meets the Circular Economy
At the research end sits a freshly launched project to recycle spent pillows made from polyurethane foam. BASF and its partners will study possible recovery routes and new applications for the material, building on the company's polyurethane circularity technology and its BASF Loop concept.
The scope runs well beyond the recycling process itself. Product design, material composition and the organization of waste streams all fall within the approach, putting the entire recovery chain under the microscope — from collection and sorting through to ways of reclaiming the foam. Students are to gain hands-on experience with circular economy methods and contribute to the investigation of new uses.
BASF is careful to frame the effort as exploratory: suitable recycling paths are still to be identified, making it a development step rather than an established industrial material loop.
Insulation Test Passes Muster in Ludwigshafen
Further along is a second German project at the Ludwigshafen site, where the recycling of technical stone-wool wire-mesh mats was put through its paces under real-world conditions in 2025 during the conversion of a tank farm. A facility developed by Rockwool with a specialist partner separates the stone wool from wire mesh, laminations and other components, and it is already up and running. The recovered rock flour can replace basalt as a raw material in stone-wool production.
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BASF and Rockwool regard the process as scalable and transferable to other industrial sites, with the recycling expected to cut demand for landfill space and reduce the extraction of new raw materials. The limits are explicit, though: contaminated material and products manufactured before 2000 are excluded.
Taiwan Expansion Targets Sub-2nm Chips
On the growth side, BASF signed a memorandum of understanding with Taiwan's Ministry of Economic Affairs on Tuesday to expand its Taoyuan site. The plan calls for additional production capacity for materials used in semiconductor structures of 2 nanometers and smaller, alongside strengthened quality analytics and innovation-center work.
According to BASF, the project is meant to broaden local production and customer support while making supply chains more resilient. The group already established Taiwan as the global strategic hub of its electronics-materials business in 2025 and has operated on the island for more than 20 years.
Production volumes, product-specific supply commitments and a start-up date were not disclosed, nor were customer qualifications or delivery terms — so the additional supply cannot be treated as secured.
Nylon Venture Still at the Drawing Board
Rounding out the week, BASF and Highsun Holding Group agreed on Monday to a non-binding review of their European polyamide-6 activities. A 50-50 joint venture is under discussion, with the possibility of including worldwide extrusion operations outside North America; the downstream engineering-plastics business is excluded.
BASF sees the combination of complementary plants, technologies and commercial capabilities as a route to better utilization rates and lower costs. Project teams have been formed, but no definitive agreement exists yet.
Reading the Four Side by Side
The two German projects share a common idea but sit at different stages: the polyurethane foam work centers on material design and possible recovery routes, while the insulation effort already involves a practically tested separation process and use of the recovered material. For investors, that distinction matters. The pillow project opens up research and application possibilities; the insulation trial delivers concrete proof of technical feasibility under industrial conditions, with its reach constrained by the stated material limits.
Across all four initiatives, the pattern is the same — intended benefits take center stage, not demonstrated operational gains. In Taiwan, the next milestone would be hard figures on additional supply. On the polyamide front, it would be a definitive agreement on scope and structure. Both rest on declarations of intent: they describe industrial ambitions, not evidence of extra delivery volumes or cost savings already achieved.
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