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A month ago the biggest of Farben's successors, Farbenfabriken Bayer of Le-verkusen. announced one of its most am bitious projects. With Anglo-Iranian Oil Co.'s German subsidiary, Bayer will build a $60 million plant near Cologne to crack 2,100,000 bbl. of oil a year into basic chemicals for plastics and synthetic fabrics. This will vastly expand Bayer's production of 13,000 different chemicals, dyes, drugs, resins and photographic products (Agfa), which last year rang up $380 million in sales.
Into the World Market. Bossed by Dr. Ulrich Haberland, 56, who ran two Bayer plants during the war and was picked by the British at war's end to direct the combine of Farben plants that now make up Bayer, the company is rapidly moving into foreign markets. Burgeoning Bayer has recently opened plants in Argentina, Brazil and Chile; it is building another in Mexico and, together with Farbwerke Hoechst, will add still another in Pakistan. In the U.S. it owns a 50-50 interest, with Monsanto Chemical Co., in West Virginia's Mobay Chemical Co. (polyurethane plastics), and a 50% interest with Pittsburgh Coke & Chemical Co. in Manhattan's Chemagro Corp. (insecticides).
Close behind Bayer among the Farben heirs is Badische Anilin-und Soda-Fabrik (B.A.S.F.) of Ludwigshafen, with sales of $357 million from chemicals, plastics, dyes, fertilizers, insecticides. Worst damaged of the big three, B.A.S.F. saw its Rhineside plant at Ludwigshafen 45% bombed out, started up again in 1945 with only 800 workers. Today the smoky, sprawling plant is Western Europe's biggest chemical unit with 36,600 workers. B.A.S.F. also employs 11,000 at its Auguste-Victoria coal mine in the Ruhr. Masterminding B.A.S.F.'s comeback is its wartime head, Chairman Carl Wurster, 56, who was acquitted at Nurnberg on charges of plundering occupied countries and employing slave labor.
Pressure v. Pressure. How did the Farben successors soar so high so fast? Answered a West German industrialist: "In physics we have the law that pressure brings forth counterpressure. The Allies exerted great pressure on Germany. In return, we exerted great counterpressure. And to get our minds off the dark future, we also worked like hell."
The splinter companies of the war-racked Farben trust started working from the moment the shooting stopped. Bayer got the first postwar production permit in the British occupation zone, and the other Farben companies rushed to follow. The market was enormous, since Germany had no money to import such vitally needed products as drugs, fertilizers and dyes. To replace the plants and patents lost to the Allies, the companies plowed back 20% of their sales into buildings and research. B.A.S.F., for example, has applied for 3,900 new chemical patents since the war, now bases only 200 of its thousands of chemical products on pre-1945 patents.