BASF honors exceptional team projects that go beyond innovation and make a major contribution to the company's success - present and future. Such projects are best-practice examples of teams that act as entrepreneurs within the company and accomplish outstanding results for BASF with a perfect mix of pioneership, passion and proficiency. 

The BASF Awards 2006 were conferred during a conference of top managers in Budapest, Hungary. One of the winners of this year's Business Excellence Award was the project submitted by the BASF Coatings team - "An innovative coating process for more MINIs."

"The awards underline the importance of innovations in our company. Innovative products, processes and business models constitute a major contribution to our sustained commercial success," said Dr. Jürgen Hambrecht, chairman of BASF's Board of Executive Directors, at the award ceremony. With the awards, BASF aims to encourage BASF employees to do things differently and turn the best ideas into successful market solutions.

Tailored solutions for customers

The Business Excellence Award is conferred by Board of Executive Directors in tribute to tailored solutions that are based on a profound understanding of markets and customer needs. One of this year's winners, BASF Coatings team joined forces with their customer BMW Group to develop a new coating technology for the production of the MINI in Oxford.

The Coatings team developed a novel car paint that combines all the functions of the formerly necessary filler coating. In addition to excellent optical features such as color, effect and tri-dimensionality, this new coating system also provides all the protective features of a filler coating - ultraviolet resistance, resistance to stone damage, and good adherence. This innovative new technology renders the filler processing step entirely redundant. The new coating process is much shorter and enables significant reductions in emissions and energy consumption at the coating plant.

What's more, the MINI production facility is using the area and infrastructure previously devoted to the filler process to expand its production capacity rapidly and efficiently. Production in Oxford is now fully converted to the new coating technology. Annual car production at the plant is set to rise from 180,000 vehicles to 240,000, starting from 2007.