An employee group at BASF's production site in Geismar, La., recently helped introduce young students to engineering.
The Emerging Professionals & Friends group in Geismar volunteered to lead Galvez Middle School's Engineering Club in a design competition.
The goal of the competition was to introduce students to the engineering life cycle, officials said. Students designed, improved and tested balloon powered cars for the competition.
In January, BASF broke ground on the third and final phase of an expansion of polyurethanes feedstock methylene diphenyl diisocyanate (MDI) in Geismar. The expansion will increase production capacity to more than 1.3 billion pounds per year by the middle of the decade to support ongoing growth of North American MDI customers.
BASF's total investment in the MD expansion is almost $1 billion, making it the firm's largest wholly owned investment in North America.
BASF is based in Ludwigshafen, Germany, with North American headquarters in Florham Park, N.J. The firm makes a wide range of specialty plastics and chemicals. Globally, BASF employs more than 110,000 and had 2021 sales of almost $80 billion.