Italy confirms its role as a key market for Basf

In 2025, Basf in Italy generated sales of 1,743.44 million euros, confirming the Group’s ability to maintain solidity and resilience in one of the most complex years in recent times from both a geopolitical and an economic standpoint. Financial year 2025 was in fact marked by a particularly unstable international environment, shaped by the continuation of the conflict in Ukraine, tensions in the Middle East and a global macroeconomic backdrop still heavily affected by uncertainty. These factors continued to exert significant pressure on supply chains, energy costs and market confidence, with cross-sector impacts on numerous industries. Despite this complex environment, in 2025 Basf confirmed its strategic presence in Italy, one of the Group’s key markets in Europe, leveraging the diversification of its portfolio, the strength of its industrial operations and a disciplined approach to cost and investment management. Within this framework, the implementation of the Winning Ways strategy is helping to guide Basf in strengthening the competitiveness of its core businesses, enhancing integrated value chains and allocating capital selectively and responsibly. This approach has enabled the company to face a scenario of strong global uncertainty while continuing to support customers and industrial value chains and to create value over the medium to long term.

The best-performing core business segment, accounting for 77.5% of total sales, was Nutrition & Care (+4%), which includes vitamins, carotenoids and sterols used in the food industry, as well as the entire range of surfactants, emulsifiers, polymers, emollients, active ingredients, pigments and UV filters for the cosmetics sector. Growth was in line with that of the segment as a whole, once again confirming how the Basf Group in Italy is a valuable partner for two of the main strengths of Made in Italy: food and personal care. By contrast, the Chemicals segment was under pressure (-8.4% on 2024), directly affected by Europe’s structural crisis, overcapacity and margin pressure, in line with the Group’s global performance. The Materials segment also declined (-11.7%), penalised by the slowdown in key sectors such as automotive and construction, as did Industrial Solutions (-5.2%), reflecting the weakness of European industrial production and customers’ cautious approach. As regards the standalone businesses, which account for 22.5% of total sales, the best-performing segment was Agricultural Solutions (+1.7% compared with the previous year), which is continuing its path of integration of the products offered by Hort@ – a  company specialising in technological solutions for the agricultural sector, acquired by Basf in 2022 – with the aim of consolidating its position as a reference player in Italy for Agriculture 4.0. In correlation with the difficult period faced by the automotive sector, the Surface Technologies segment was also affected, recording a 9.9% decrease in sales compared with 2024. Investments in Italy continued in line with previous years, with the aim of making production increasingly efficient and delivering a concrete reduction in emissions: a commitment being pursued across Europe, consistent with the objective of achieving net zero emissions by 2045.

“The 2025 financial results show an overall performance for Basf in Italy broadly in line with that of the Group as a whole, reflecting a particularly complex macroeconomic and industrial environment. In our country too, performance has been affected by structural conditions that continue to place pressure on the competitiveness of European industry, starting with energy costs, market volatility and an increasingly challenging regulatory framework. In this scenario, the ability of our core businesses to act structurally on costs is particularly significant. This is an essential change in order to ensure the company’s operational resilience. Also significant is the positive contribution of the Nutrition & Care and Agricultural Solutions segments, which confirm how strongly these areas continue to drive Basf in Italy, thanks to solid demand and a strong link with the country’s strategic value chains,” commented Manuel Pianazzi, Managing Director of Basf Italia.