BASF Strengthens & Grows Its Core Businesses with ‘Winning Ways’ Strategy

After its nearly complete carve-out of its standalone businesses, BASF is focusing on strengthening and growing its core businesses in the next phase of its “Winning Ways” strategy. 

The newly established Core Transformation Office, led by Julia Raquet, drives the implementation of cross-unit transformation projects across all core businesses, service units, and corporate center units. 

In her new role, Julia Raquet reports directly to Dr. Markus Kamieth, Chairman of the Board of Executive Directors of BASF SE.

The program, launched as “CoreShift,” aims to achieve up to 20­% net cash fixed cost savings in the core by 2029, compared with the 2024 baseline. 

BASF’s core businesses comprise four segments, Chemicals, Materials, Industrial Solutions, and Nutrition & Care, representing around €­40 billion in global sales. 

BASF sells products at every step in the value chain, supported by competitive technologies and local-for-local production in all regions. Together, these businesses form a focused core portfolio that offers an opportunity for further simplification.

“CoreShift” builds on ongoing initiatives and goes further by applying a global, cross-unit transformation approach. 

Key enablers of this transformation include further simplification of operations and organization, globally harmonized business processes and corresponding standardized IT solutions enabled by a dedicated ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system for the core businesses, as well as the increasing use of AI across BASF Group.

“Our core businesses stand for strong market positions, for driving innovation and for enabling the green transformation of our customers. By carving out the standalone businesses, we are creating a more focused and coherent core,” said Kamieth. “Our clear focus is to leverage best-in-class competitiveness and synergies across our core businesses to lift their earnings power.”

“Simplifying the operating model of our core is essential to ensure best-in-class competitiveness and drive profitable growth,” said Julia Raquet. “Our efforts to deliver on this ambition are already in full swing, including restructuring our largest Verbund site in Ludwigshafen and reshaping our global service units.”