Victoria Callaghan: Market Development Manager at BASF

Key Benefits from the Group

Having key industry decision makers as part of the Collaborative Group was one of the highlights for Victoria, as it allowed for exploration of challenges associated with packaging from multiple viewpoints. She noted that this approach helped to remove the ‘wait’ in trying to tackle problems in the sector, as agreements on strategic long-term direction could be jointly made. Futures & Foresight helped Victoria change her mind set during the data analysis stage, and rather than drawing solely from historical data to draw conclusions from, she now shifts the thinking into the ‘preferable’ environmental and business future, applying the 30-year lens and creating actionable pathway accordingly.

Large organisations, such as BASF, have strong vision and ideas on how to make what they produce more sustainable, but they find it challenging to apply new ways of thinking and strategising. For example, BASF works on a number of initiatives, including carbon offsetting or the development of innovative packaging materials by using organic matter instead of oil and gas in the steam crackers. The latter can result in traditionally looking and performing packaging material, which can encourage a wider adoption of non-fossil fuel-based materials in the fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) sector. Understanding where their products end up at the end-of-life stage is where BASF is driving research and investment to eliminate waste and introduce efficiencies.

BASF Challenges

BASF, as an organisation, sits at the beginning of the supply chain, meaning that it produces the raw material that other companies convert into packaging. However, they also use packaging themselves, exposing them to regulatory pressures from new taxes such as the Packaging Tax, something they did not anticipate. For instance, BASF has long transported products such as plastic pellets in one-tonne tanks. With the introduction of new products containing recycled content—which may have restrictions on their applications, such as suitability for food-contact versus non-food-contact uses—BASF must carefully manage how these materials are handled alongside virgin materials. This is essential to ensure that the integrity of the other 6,000 products transported in the same tanks is not compromised.

Placing Sustainability First

Being a chemical company means that BASF sources raw materials from the Earth, such as oil and gas, raising supply chain challenges around emissions. The ethos of the company is to ensure that for every tonne of product that BASF produces, to saves three times the CO2 emissions, which is why they are heavily investing into electrifying their operations using renewable energy, for example, from wind turbines.

BASF has helped develop a paper bottle that can hold alcohol, shampoo, water – an idea which came from attempting to replace a trillion single-use plastic bottles. The original concept stemmed from the challenge of serving alcoholic drinks at music festivals where you can’t use glass, but then it went further, and other applications like uses for laundry detergent. Victoria highlights that BASF is not anti-plastic and sees it as an important material that has its place in the market; however, they cannot ignore the issues caused by its leakage into the environment at the end of life, something they cannot control, yet can help resolve in certain product categories by developing alternatives in pulp. Pulp in the environment, if leaked at the end of life, will take a much shorter time to disintegrate, limiting pollution.

BASF has their own sustainability team, which runs seminars, open customer days where they talk about topics like mass balance, recycling and ChemCycling.

Overall, Victoria found the Collaborative Group research highly useful, and it will continue to help BASF to apply a long-term lens in their innovations to ensure a sustainable future.