After the successful introduction of its internet portal for thermoplastic materials ( www.basf.de/plasticsportal) in December 2000, BASF AG (D-67056 Ludwigshafen; www.basf.com) has made further efforts to customise the retail business with plastic materials and optimise electronic sales. Albis Plastic GmbH (D-20531 Hamburg; www.albis.com) and A. Schulman (F-92366 Meudon-La-Forêt; www.aschulman.com) will be responsible for sales of engineering plastics for retail purposes to the European market which can be ordered via BASF´s plastics portal. As soon as customers visiting the BASF portal wish to order less than the required minimum depending on the individual product class, they will be linked to Albis´ or Schulman´s website. The customer has a choice of their preferred supplier.

In future, the companies plan a complete integration of their websites into the BASF plastics portal thus allowing customers to place their orders directly at one site. These orders are then automatically referred to the partner companies for processing.

In 2001, BASF has processed orders placed within its e-commerce platform which total EUR 160m so far. Another source reports that by the end of 2001, BASF intends to take in 20% of its polystyrene turnover from business conducted via its internet platform.