BASF Offers 3D Printing Products on Its 1688.com Online Flagship Store

Nov 30, 2020, for the first time, BASF starts offering a portfolio of 3D printing products on its flagship store at 1688.com, Alibaba’s B2B online shopping platform. It enables BASF to better serve small and medium enterprises in a more flexible and timely manner, while it also aims to better understand the needs of local customer by interacting directly with them online.

“The Chinese market is highly digitized. We adapt one-stop e-commerce solutions for all business units. With our new offerings of advanced 3D printing materials and solutions, we can provide more diversity of our product portfolio online while unlock new business opportunities to reach out to a broader group of potential customers out there”, said Dr. Zheng Daqing, BASF’s Senior Vice President, Business and Market Development Greater China.

“China is an important market for us. Making our 3D printing products available on our 1688.com flagship store is an important move to expand our online presence and diversify our conventional sales and service channels. It not only makes our offerings more visible and accessible to small to medium enterprises, but also helps us engage deeper with our existing customers”, said François Minec, Managing Director BASF 3D Printing Solutions GmbH.

Initially, there are more than 20 products for 3D printing available on the flagship store ranges from Ultrafuse® series of filaments for Fused Filament Fabrication (FFF), to Ultracur3D® series of photopolymers for Stereolithography (SLA) and Digital Light Processing (DLP). These products are developed to match specific requirements in various applications from industries including automotive, aerospace, consumer goods, as well as dental areas. For example, customers can easily find high-performance materials including:

• Ultrafuse® PLA family with three grades: Ultrafuse® PLA BASIC, Ultrafuse® PLA and Ultrafuse® PLA PRO1. As a bio-based and bio-degradable (subject to certain conditions) polymer, polylactic acid (PLA) is the most widely used material for FFF 3D-printing. Ultrafuse® PLA BASIC is targeting at users that are looking for easy-to-print, reliable and affordable filaments to print 3D objects, while Ultrafuse® PLA further offers outstanding printing quality and consistence, as well as a wide range of colour choices. Additionally, Ultrafuse® PLA PRO1 is a premium PLA filament with superior toughness, enabling fast printing of high-performance parts such as tools, jigs and fixtures.
• Ultrafuse® rPET, a filament made from recycled PET material, is a serious alternative to filaments made from virgin raw materials. The “r” stands for recycled, which shows BASF’s commitment to combine high performance with sustainability. YUYO, an innovative French company, developed a new kind of eco-designed surfboards, which have a 3D-printed internal structure made of the sustainable Ultrafuse® rPET filament.
• Ultracur3D® ST 45B, which is a photopolymer product that can fulfil the requirements of functional applications regarding high accuracy and mechanical strength, where existing photopolymer materials often show limitations.
  More 3D printing products including metal filaments for FFF and plastic powders for Selective Laser Sintering (SLS) will be rolled out on this platform in the near future.

As one of the first chemical companies to open online shops on Alibaba e-commerce platform 1688.com, BASF offers the largest chemical product portfolio in China, with more than 350 products from 10 business units and continuously optimize its operation to tap into growth opportunities on the online marketplace. With a fully automated ordering system launched on 1688.com early this year, it shortens the order-to-ship time from several days to two or three hours.

1688.com is home to more than ten million enterprises with 12 million daily visitors, and it has become a go-to place for business-to-business transactions.

Source: BASF