In 2003, BASF AG signed an agreement with Omya, a Swiss-based producer of white minerals, to cooperate in the development of paper making and coatings products by using each other’s R&D facilities. While Omya makes calcium carbonates and talcs for use as fillers and pigments, BASF produces binders and dispersions for paper makers. ‘Paper companies are increasingly demanding solutions from their suppliers that have already been tested and shown to work’, says a BASF official. Under the agreement, Omya gets access to a pilot coating machine at BASF’s paper technical centre in Ludwigshafen, Germany, after closing its own testing coating equipment at its headquarters in Oftringen, near Zurich, Switzerland. At the same time, BASF will be able to test its products at Omya’s printing centre at Oftringen. ‘The alliance with Omya makes it easier for us to offer holistic system solutions to our customers’, says Hans Richard Schmidt, a spokeperson for BASF’s European business unit for paper. ‘It also enables us to make the process of rendering services less costly.’
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