Fifty years of propionic acid manufacturing at BASF

A rather acidic success story started at BASF 50 years ago: in the summer of 1960, the company brought on stream the first large-scale manufacturing plant for propionic acid at its integrated Ludwigshafen Verbund site. The inauguration of another facility that produces this carboxylic acid followed at the Nanjing site in China in 2005. Having expanded the annual capacity at these sites in 2009, which brought its total annual capacity to 149,000 metric tons, BASF is now one of the world’s major propionic acid manufacturers. This organic acid, which also occurs naturally, is valued as a preservative for feedgrain and as a building block for synthesis, for example in the production of pharmaceuticals, crop protection products and plastics. BASF has to date produced about 2.4 million metric tons of propionic acid.
 

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