BASF SE, the world renowned chemical company, is quite upset because of tough market conditions, as the worldwide recession hurts the company’s earnings for 2008-09 more than what it was expecting.

The company hasn’t estimated on this new outlook, but during November it dumped its target to go with the earnings of the previous year, when the company got 7.6billion euro pretax profit. BASF says that the company is considering shutting its 80 plants temporarily and would also restrict or stop production in some other plants.

BASF is quite well-known as a maker of paints, fertilizers and glues and also has business lines related to natural gas and oil production.

Juergen Hambrecht, BASF boss, says that the situation is quite difficult and tough to predict and it can’t be expected that economic environment would improve within few months.

According to BASF, there was a considerable decline in global business during December in almost all regions, and chemical products demand couldn’t pick up during the first half of the current month.

This news became the cause of 5.5% drop in BASF shares that closed at 22.47euro in early hours trading.

The company says that plans related to short time work on various other sites are also under discussion and this possibility can’t be ruled out.