BASF, the world's largest chemicals company, is to press ahead with the expansion of a huge joint-venture production complex with Sinopec in spite of a $500m surge in the project's costs.
The German company said it and Sinopec, one of China's three state-owned oil companies, had raised their investment in their Nanjing site from $900m to $1.4bn as a result of higher construction costs in the country, exchange-rate effects and plans for additional capacity.
Martin Brudermüller, head of BASF's Asia-Pacific operations, said the expansion of the four-year-old complex underlined BASF's “strong belief in the growth opportunities of the Chinese market”.