BASF donates 40,000 litres of hand sanitiser to UNHCR

BASF is supplying 40,000 litres of hand sanitiser produced as part of the Helping Hands initiative at the Ludwigshafen site to the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR).

Michael Heinz, Site Director and member of the Board of Executive Directors at BASF SE, said: “By doing this, we want to support the organisation in the important fight against COVID-19 in refugee camps all over the world. The conditions there make it easy for the virus to spread. We are glad that we have been able to help improve the situation, in particular in healthcare in the Rhine-Neckar metropolitan region and beyond, with our Helping Hands initiative. The refugee camps, including those in the Congo, are now among the global hotspots of the pandemic.”

UNHCR delivers to refugee camps, GP practices and medical centres, clinics, schools, community centres and registration centres in the Congo.

Managing Director of UNO-Flüchtlingshilfe, the German partner of UNHCR, Peter Ruhenstroth-Bauer, added: “BASF’s donation of such a large amount of hand sanitiser has an immediate effect: It will save lives. The disinfectant is urgently needed in the Republic of the Congo – a country that is already faced with enormous problems even without the coronavirus.”

BASF initiated the Helping Hands campaign in March 2020 due to the spreading coronavirus pandemic and gradually expanded it. Based on exemptions by the state of Rhineland-Palatinate, hand sanitiser was initially manufactured on the basis of isopropanol – a product not usually part of the company’s portfolio.

Due to the additionally produced quantities of bioethanol-based disinfectant, BASF was able to expand its support and supply the Germany-wide platform of the German Chemical Industry Association (VCI).