A zeolite catalyst is now specified by where its aluminium atoms sit
1 / 8
The environmental catalyst work has moved past composition. One filing claims a chabazite grown from a faujasite source in which paired aluminium tetrahedra sit as third-nearest neighbours, two silicon tetrahedra apart, and defines that arrangement by a two-dimensional silicon-29 NMR signature at −104 to −108 ppm in one dimension and −208 to −212 ppm in the other. The same structural descriptor carries a performance number in a parallel filing: at a copper-to-aluminium ratio of 0.2–0.5 and a silica-to-alumina ratio of 8–40, the material holds at least half its nitrogen oxide conversion after sixteen hours at 850 °C. A rival can match a diffraction pattern and still miss that aluminium distribution.
The next move is a €10 billion acquisition, not a plant
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In September 2026 BASF approached Evonik about a takeover, and Evonik rejected an initial offer of about €22.15 a share — roughly €10.3 billion — as too low, declining to enter formal talks or open its books for due diligence. BASF has not confirmed the figure, described the discussions as exploratory and their outcome as open, and has since indicated it could raise the offer. It has also committed to preserving Evonik's German sites and its no-compulsory-redundancy guarantee, which runs to 2032, in any agreement. North Rhine-Westphalia's state government intervened publicly on jobs and on Evonik remaining independent, and the RAG-Stiftung foundation, which holds just over 40 percent and was already planning to reduce it, has been drawn into direct negotiations.
Strategy
The new tonnage goes to the coast and the new specialties stay in Germany
3 / 8
Zhanjiang reached full operation in March 2026: €8.7 billion, the largest single investment in the company's history, more than 2,000 employees on site and power contracted from renewable sources. The more informative announcement came a month later, when the aroma ingredients business started menthol and linalool production in Ludwigshafen and a world-scale citral plant at Zhanjiang in the same release, with sixty new jobs in Germany attached to the European half.
Research
A shell around the crystal carries the specification
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Copper and iron are co-exchanged into a single chabazite crystal rather than laid down as two successive washcoats, and an alumina layer is then grown over 20 to 100 percent of the crystal's outer surface. That outer layer is a physical barrier, and its thickness fraction is the claim. It also makes the catalyst's performance a function of coating geometry rather than of bulk chemistry, which is the kind of specification a customer's validation loop can measure directly.
Market
Europe's polyamide 6 chain is being merged rather than fixed
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On 19 October BASF signed a non-binding memorandum with China's Highsun Holding Group to explore putting their European polyamide 6 activities into a 50:50 joint venture, and to evaluate adding their global extrusion operations outside North America to it. The downstream engineering plastics businesses on both sides are excluded. The chief executive framed it as European consolidation needed for competitiveness.
Strategy
One division is being made listable, and it is buying the capability its patents do not cover
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Shareholders approved the hive-down into BASF Agricultural Solutions Deutschland GmbH at the April 2026 meeting, and by September four banks had been mandated as global coordinators, with the entity to be structured as an SE and IPO readiness targeted for mid-2027. The preparation is administrative more than technical: a governance hub of more than fifty corporate roles in Bucharest, built to run financial reporting, audit and procurement at arm's length from the group.
Research
The acrylic acid plant is the patented object
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The oxidation reactor is treated as given, and the claims begin at the hot gas leaving it. Three filings from 2026 run an extraction unit and a cracking column side by side or in series, with two recirculating gas streams returning cracked monomer to the separation column above the point where crude acid is drawn. The residue that would otherwise be burnt is handled mechanically: a vessel with an in-line mill pump that circulates 1 to 100 cubic metres an hour at 1 to 40 bar and 50 to 150 °C so that deposits cannot settle into a blockage.
Market
The improvement in the numbers is partly a supply disruption, and it is fading
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Ahead of the 28 October third-quarter call, one analyst note expects adjusted EBITDA of about €1.65 billion against €2.45 billion in the second quarter, attributing the drop to the fading of temporary upstream pricing benefits from Middle East supply disruptions, seasonality, and the normalisation of elevated hedging and trading gains.
Three things decide BASF's next two quarters: whether the Evonik price moves, what the November capital markets day discloses about a standalone Agricultural Solutions, and whether polyurethane price support survives the Shanghai restart.
Signals to watch
A higher Evonik bid, or a narrower one
Evonik rejected €22.15 per share as too low and declined to open its books. The gate is not Evonik's board but RAG-Stiftung's roughly 43% holding, a foundation whose obligation is funding perpetual coal-mining liabilities and which therefore needs cash certainty and employment guarantees before it moves. Track two alternatives: a revised offer materially above the six-times-EBITDA reading trade press put on the first bid, or a retreat to asset purchases — Evonik is already divesting Oxeno and Syneqt under its own programme. A second full bid would have to be funded against the buyback and the listing runway, so watch the financing language, not the price.
Signals to watch
What the 23-24 November capital markets day actually discloses
BASF will present strategy and a dedicated Agricultural Solutions session in Ludwigshafen on 23-24 November, with the unit's full management board presenting. This is the first date on which the pure-play can be valued, and the documents that matter are the standalone margin, the separation cost still to come, and the leverage the new entity carries. Watch specifically whether IPO proceeds are earmarked against the €12bn distribution commitment or against a raised Evonik bid — the two cannot both be funded from the same cash. A presentation built on cost and cash rather than trait differentiation tells you how the company expects generic erosion to run.
Signals to watch
Whether polyurethane price support survives the restart
The Caojing release shut units and lifted East China TDI and MDI spot prices, and BASF followed on 11 September with a $250 per tonne increase on Lupranate MDI and TDI across ASEAN and South Asia. Chinese TDI was quoted at 18,000-18,800 yuan per tonne in mid-October, against roughly 17,500 in September. Track the full-restart date and the first contract settlements after Wanhua's Yantai unit returns: if prices hold once both sites are running, the tightness is structural and OCI's confirmed exit from TDI by December 2026 removes a supplier permanently. If they decay within weeks, September was an outage spike and the fourth-quarter pricing story weakens.
Signals to watch
Dahej gets a number, or stays an option
The Gujarat MDI study is at an advanced stage with land secured and no capacity or capital disclosed. Watch for a tonnage and capex figure at the capital markets day or with third-quarter results; until one appears, the project is engineering spend rather than committed capacity and should not be modelled. The sequencing matters: Geismar commissions first and sets the pricing context the India business case is built on, so watch Geismar's start-up before treating Dahej as a hedge against Chinese supply.
Signals to watch
A fifth nylon price letter, and whether the fourth holds
The $0.15/lb increase on caprolactam, polyamide 6 and copolyamide takes effect on 1 October or as contracts permit. Four increases in a year is only a pricing position if it survives indexation. Watch the realised contract settlement rather than the letter, and watch benzene and naphtha as the pass-through driver. The structural counterpoint arrived in October, when BASF and Highsun signed a memorandum to explore a 50:50 European polyamide 6 joint venture excluding engineering plastics — if that proceeds, pricing letters become a transition mechanism rather than a strategy.
Signals to watch
Apple's response decides whether trinamiX has a business or a claim
The 3 September complaint in the Western District of Texas asserts seven patents and asks for an injunction covering iPhone 15 through 17 and recent iPad Pro models. Track three procedural moves: a motion to transfer venue out of the Western District, inter partes review petitions against the asserted patents, and any filing at the International Trade Commission. An injunction against current iPhones is not a realistic outcome; a licence is. The signal worth watching is the first disclosed settlement or licence figure, because that is the only evidence the sensing portfolio carries value beyond its own cost base.
Signals to watch
Sodium-ion and separator film need a customer, not another filing
The AZO-coated O3 sodium layered oxide is designed to run on existing cathode assets, and the dry-process separator filing was co-filed with the Yangtze River Delta Physics Research Center. Neither is a business yet. Track whether either draws a named cell-maker partner, a pilot line or a qualification announcement before the 2027 listing. Sodium is cheap optionality that protects plant utilisation while diluting margin; separator film is capital-intensive and held by specialists, so the credible route is supplying formulation into existing film makers. Absent a partner, both are defensive filings.
Signals to watch
Certified carbon footprints become a contract term, or they do not
Paper-coating dispersions at 20-45% lower product carbon footprint, made on a mass-balance basis with unchanged specifications so customers avoid requalification, plus a letter of intent with UPC on lower-carbon plasticisers. A letter of intent is not a contract. Watch whether UPC converts to a supply agreement with a disclosed volume, and whether certified footprint appears as a scored criterion in a public tender. Either would validate the thesis that a premium can be charged without new chemistry; neither appearing by mid-2027 would suggest customers value the reporting but will not pay for it.
Signals to watch
The Ludwigshafen acid chloride expansion is a pattern or a one-off
Thirty per cent more capacity and an average 19% lower product carbon footprint in a German intermediates chain is the period's clearest counter-signal to the European retreat story. Watch utilisation disclosure and whether low-footprint grades command a premium in coatings, pharmaceutical and crop-protection contracts. A second German or European investment announcement in the next two quarters would make this a deliberate pattern of defending positions where BASF holds a leading global share; silence leaves it an isolated asset upgrade.
Signals to watch
Two regulatory dates now sit under the recycling thesis
The Commission concluded on 11 September that the EU's battery recycling efficiency and material-recovery targets remain fit for purpose, with no grounds for revision. With black mass becoming hazardous waste from November 2026 and non-OECD export routes closing, that combination should keep feedstock in Europe, which favours BASF's co-located Schwarzheide chain. Track whether the effect shows up as higher collection volumes into the black mass plant rather than as higher gate fees, and whether the Tarragona refinery is unpaused. On the automotive side, the 15% recycled-content mandate for new vehicles approved from September 2032 sets a sorting requirement that the period's four sensor filings address; watch for a sorting partnership or equipment sale, which is the route to volume without BASF funding the tonnage.
Innovation activity
Industrial & Performance Chemicals
BASF's September filings work on the economics of existing value chains rather than on new chemistry. Three strands carry the weight: emissions catalysis, where a mechanistic paper and five publications converge on the same lever; acrylic acid recovery, filed as a pair; and oxidation and CO2 chemistry, where several filings attack compressor uptime, peroxide quality and carbon recycling.
Innovation activity
Plastics & Polyurethanes
September's plastics and polyurethane output is not about new polymers. It is about making recovered carbon meet existing specifications, and about removing tin from urethane chemistry. Most of the filings are process engineering: purifying recovered caprolactam and recovered polyol to virgin grade, and sorting the waste streams that feed them.
Innovation activity
Agricultural Solutions
The month's crop-protection output is mostly prosecution, not discovery. Many of the patent publications are national-phase entries or grants of families first filed years earlier — the 2019-vintage high-load stability formulation granted in South Africa, the oxadiazole fungicides granted in China, the sulfoximine pesticide granted in South Africa — so September dates mean September publication, not September invention. Three threads are genuinely new work, and they point in the same direction: protecting proprietary chemistry rather than adding more of it.
Innovation activity
Coatings & Surface Technologies
September's filings in this area are not a coatings story. They are three retained chemistry franchises — semiconductor wet processing, emission-catalyst coating and dispersions for asphalt and oilfield — plus at least one filing that now belongs to a company BASF no longer controls. Anyone reading this area to judge BASF's coatings pipeline is reading a portfolio that has largely left the group.
Innovation activity
Battery & Energy Materials
September's battery work is a manufacturing-cost programme more than a chemistry programme. The patents are overwhelmingly about making nickel-rich layered oxide cheaper, drier, more uniform and more consistently coated — with two moves that matter more than their share of the output: sodium-ion, and a battery separator film.
Innovation activity
Digital & Automation Solutions
September's output in this area is overwhelmingly an accounting layer for chemical products, not plant automation. The filings cluster into two publication dates, 10 and 17 September, and describe one architecture: fragmented supplier data pulled through a decentral network, normalised by a rule-based engine against chemical-product semantic models, and issued as a chemical product passport carrying a decentral identifier (,,, ), with a variant scoped specifically to emission data (). The passport is only the surface; underneath sits a full allocation calculus — feedstock demand reconciled against stoichiometry and substituted when the deviation exceeds a target (), sustainability attributes split across co-products (), virtual balancing accounts and credits designed to stop double counting when sustainable and conventional material are chemically indistinguishable (, ), and a carbon-emission method for mass-balance products that nets a "load" for producing the bio-input against a "credit" for fossil carbon displaced (). Verification of inbound material against declared characteristics is handled by issuing digital credentials ().