The BMW Group is the first vehicle manufacturer to employ automotive OEM coatings certified according to BASF’s biomass balance approach. BASF said BMW chose to use its CathoGuard 800 ReSource e-coat at its plants in Leipzig, Germany, and Rosslyn, South Africa, along with iGloss matt ReSource clearcoat throughout Europe.
According to BASF, using these product versions for vehicle coatings enables CO2 avoidance of around 40 per cent per coating layer. This will reduce the amount of CO2 emitted in the plants by more than 15,000 metric tons by 2030.
“As the largest provider of chemical products to the automotive industry, we are aware of our responsibility to support our customers with innovative, eco-efficient solutions,” said Dr Markus Kamieth, Member of the Board of Executive Directors of BASF. “The biomass balance approach allows us to make our coatings solutions even more sustainable while retaining the same quality. We are delighted that the BMW Group has chosen to play a pioneering role in the automotive industry and that our products play a key part in helping it achieve its ambitious sustainability goals.”
Joachim Post, Member of the Board of Management of BMW, responsible for Purchasing and Supplier Network, said by reducing the company’s use of fossil raw materials, it can conserve natural resources and lower CO2 emissions. “To achieve this, we are increasingly relying on sustainability innovations in our supplier network. Innovative paints based on renewable raw materials are an important step in this direction.”
BASF said that as a corrosion protection technology with optimum protection of edges, the CathoGuard 800 e-coat helps millions of cars live longer. Its biomass-balanced version, CathoGuard 800 ReSource, adds a reduced carbon footprint to the e-coat application’s material efficiency, without changing the product’s formulation.
“In BASF’s biomass balance approach, renewable raw materials like bio-based naphtha and biomethane from organic waste are used as raw materials when manufacturing primary chemical products and are fed into the production Verbund (the physical integration of production, market platforms and technologies),” the company said.
BASF said the proportion of bio-based raw materials is then arithmetically assigned to certain sales products according to a certified method. This attribution model is comparable with the principle of green electricity.
An independent certification confirms that BASF has replaced the quantities of fossil resources required for the biomass-balanced product sold with renewable raw materials.