Founded in 1865 in Mannheim BASF is the largest chemical producer in the world. Employing nearly 125k people, BASF has strong positions in a broad range of industries including plastics, crop protection, oil, and gas. In 2016 the company posted sales of nearly $70 billion. The company is considered to be one of the most innovative companies on the planet, a position borne out by topping the Patent Asset Index for nearly a decade.

Founded in 1992 in Delray Beach, Florida, SPDI has created innovative yet reliable UV equipment in a variety of industries including printing, signage, plastic, guitar making, aerospace, and flooring. SPDI designed the technology and holds the patent for handheld UV curing in the automotive collision industry and has been optimizing and proving out the technology over the past 6 years.

Despite the vast difference in the size of the companies, the pairing of BASF and SPDI in the world of UV primer is complementary enough to almost be considered serendipitous. BASF is a company that has led in nearly every different industry that it has been involved in throughout its history and is aiming for that leadership in refinishing, a nearly $8 billion dollar a year industry. BASF currently finds itself with a substantial share of that pie but still behind industry titans, Axalta and PPG. 

The refinishing industry, like the rest of the collision repair industry, finds itself, in a cycle of consolidation. The larger body shops are eating up the market at a daunting pace. As can be seen in the charts below, the number of shops in the US market has decreased substantially in the last decade.  

It is not a surprise that despite an over 25% drop in the number of body shops operating in the US, the number of large collision shops has nearly doubled. 

The story in terms of revenue is quite similar. The collision market has grown slightly but the percentage of revenue that is taken up by the mega shops has more than doubled from 9.1% to 19.2%. This trend continues.

For shops between $2MM and $10MM per year, the backbone of the industry, the narrative in the coming decade will be one of optimization or obsolescence. Either these shops adopt "assembly-line" type optimized processes and new technologies, or they will continue to lose more and more of the market to the behemoths.

BASF, with the help of SPDI, is in a great position to  grow their market penetration and help these mid-sized companies survive and thrive thanks to their focus on optimization. With the incredible time savings brought to the prepping and priming process by UV Fastlane, combined with the process optimization of the APS program, medium-sized shops that join the BASF family are given a lifeline that is not offered by any combination of companies in the industry. Frankly, it is a lifeline that creates a virtuous cycle for customers, sales representatives, BASF, and SPDI alike. 

By joining SPDI in presenting optimized, patented, and high-powered Handheld UV Curing along with the launch of its own Glasurit 151-170, BASF sales reps are able to bring collision shops a product combination that is not only best-in-class, but has the potential to revolutionize their productivity. This product combination can be used to increase customer account size or even as a customer acquisition method.

In SPDI, BASF has essentially acquired a UV technology firm that is fully committed to their joint success with nearly 3 decades of experience in the UV technology industry and 6 years of perfecting the technology for the refinishing industry.

By combining the Glasurit 151-170 with SPDI's UVFastlane 2K cart, BASF customers are able to have a truly cutting edge and industry leading position in automotive collision repair. There is no other combination of companies in the industry that can offer body shops a priming process that can guarantee the following: 

• Completely instantaneous curing of primer.
• No limitations on repair size. With the handheld irradiator, a shop worker can go around the car and instantly cure any part that needs priming.
• UV primer on every type of surface (with the additional use of Glasurit 934-10)
• Opaque, "same as urethane" primer look and feel to make the transition from standard primer to UV a seamless one.
• Less sanding than any other primer.
• No mixing.
• No product waste (no pot-life on UV primer)
• 40% less material usage than conventional direct to metal primer.