Amir Pourirani from BASF Performance Materials: the industry is moving to a system-design mindset

Amir Pourirani, Marketing Director of TPU (Thermoplastic polyurethane) Asia Pacific at BASF Performance Materials, outlines BASF’s ambition to become the “preferred partner enabling our customers’ green transformation”, by combining “performance, sustainability, and scalability”.

In the context of the footwear industry, he describes the company’s role as spanning the entire value chain “from early concept to commercialisation”. The emphasis is on working with partners early enough to align material choices with design intent, processing realities and market requirements.

Rather than focusing on a single component, Pourirani highlights BASF’s capacity to contribute to the entire structure of a shoe using PU (polyurethane) and TPU solutions, from midsoles and outsoles to uppers and structural parts. He stresses the importance of making material decisions with the full system in mind.

Pourirani argues that the footwear industry is shifting “from a material-selection mindset to a system-design mindset”, which is changing what brands expect from suppliers. The question is no longer which material performs best, but whether it can support automation, reduce waste, improve processing, while still delivering a recognisable consumer benefit.

He suggests this pushes material suppliers into earlier stages of development, enabling them to connect design, performance, manufacturing and sustainability decisions. In his view, suppliers increasingly need to understand “product ambition” rather than simply respond to a technical specification.

For BASF, that means engaging with developers, moulders, component makers and factories. Pourirani believes that the strongest advances happen when these partners collaborate from the outset to “optimise the entire process, not just one material specification”. 

According to him, co-creation and even co-branding can strengthen a product story when the benefits of the materials become visible and meaningful to consumers.

Elastollan^® GripTec, Pourirani says, illustrates how outsole development is moving away from single-property optimisation towards “multifunctional performance platforms”. He frames the product as emblematic of a broader shift in innovation priorities, where brands increasingly expect “materials that can deliver multiple benefits at the same time”.

The Director points to the traditional trade-offs that have shaped outsole selection, such as grip versus durability, performance versus design flexibility, or processing ease versus functionality. In his view, innovation is now about “how material, design, and processing come together as one system”.

In that context, he describes TPU-based outsoles, such as the Elastollan® GripTec, as offering a combination of grip and abrasion resistance alongside design possibilities such as “transparency, colour effects, and more freedom in geometry”. He also highlights the advantages of processing over conventional rubber systems.

On the sustainability front, Pourirani says that footwear is entering a more “evidence-based phase”, where “claims alone are no longer enough”. He argues that brands are now forced to weigh trade-offs more explicitly, considering carbon impact, processing effects and how a new option compares with incumbent solutions.

He suggests that life cycle assessments and product carbon footprint calculations can provide “a more objective basis for decision-making”, placing sustainability into the same frame as performance and manufacturability. He adds that third-party validation can increase internal confidence and make external communication more credible.

As an example, he refers to an independent Intertek assessment, which indicates that Elastollan® GripTec has “approximately 40% lower carbon footprint at the manufacturing stage” compared to conventional rubber outsoles. He believes that, in the future, credible data will become “as important to material adoption as physical performance data is today”.

Looking ahead, Pourirani expects that competitive advantage will increasingly come from rethinking how innovation happens across the value chain. He argues that footwear development requires earlier and more integrated collaboration between suppliers, brands, designers, moulders and manufacturers.

“For material suppliers like BASF, this means understanding not only the needs of our direct customers, but also the expectations of our customers' customers”, the Director notes. Without that broader view, he suggests, technically impressive solutions may struggle to become commercially relevant.

Automation is one of the forces he expects to accelerate this shift, as it changes how footwear must be designed. Pourirani anticipates a move from component-level optimisation to integrated system solutions, citing “bottom unit concepts” in which the midsole and outsole are engineered as a single functional system. 

The goal is “to enable complete bottom units to be produced in one—or very few—processing steps”, thereby reducing assembly complexity, lowering variability, minimising waste and supporting a lower environmental footprint while remaining reliable at industrial scale.

Ultimately, the innovations that succeed will be those “that connect performance, processing, sustainability and value chain needs into a reliable industrial-scale solution”.