From UKReuters.

BASF, the world’s largest chemicals maker by sales, said it is eager to expand in sub-Saharan Africa to fill a “blank spot” in its global presence, attracted by encouraging business conditions.

Building materials such as insulation foam panels are the main products in demand in the area, BASF said.

“Many of our industrial customers are going there,” said BASF CEO Kurt Bock. BASF is headquartered in Germany.

Its products range from solvents, coatings and catalytic converters to absorbents for diapers. The company earns about a half-billion euros in sales in sub-Saharan Africa – a fraction of its total 72 billion euro sales volume – but “that can be considerably improved,” Bock said. “We have set up subsidiaries in Kenya and Nigeria. Many things in Africa have changed for the better.”

BASF’s oil and gas unit Wintershall was the second-largest foreign oil firm in Libya before Muammar Gaddafi was removed from power in 2011.

Wintershall said earlier this month that strikes and protests at Libya’s oil terminals halted onshore output there, making a forecast for 2013 output impossible.

The situation in North Africa remains difficult with no signs that a labor dispute at oil terminals in Libya’s ports will be resolved, Reuters reported.

Read more at UKReuters.