BASA, a company with more than a century of experience in the sector, focuses its industrial activity on the distillation of coal tar from the coke batteries of the main European steel groups.

Following its acquisition by the company, Fábrica de Productos Químicos, S.A. (SANA), the group undertook a major technological renovation of its site in order to improve and expand all its production processes and to provide itself with the appropriate means to face the strong competition in the sector.

The distillery is located in Lutxana-Barakaldo, 5 kilometres from Bilbao, on the Left Bank of the Bilbao Estuary, an industrial area linked to Spanish heavy industry.

The major product obtained from the distillation of tar is pitch. Coal tar is a black solid at room temperature consisting of a mixture of numerous hydrocarbons. BASA markets a wide variety of pitch in order to serve all consumer market segments.

BASA focuses its activity on the fractional distillation of coal tar, using two plants: continuous distillation and batch distillation. The same process is carried out in both plants and the only reason for their coexistence is to provide flexibility in production.

As part of these policies of flexibility and production improvement, KREAN has worked on detailed engineering projects and the supervision of assembly and start-up of several plants, such as the expansion of the pitch storage tank farm to an operating temperature of between 350ºC and 400ºC and the renovation of the creosote crystallisation plant, with an operating temperature of between -10ºC and 200ºC.