Industry structure vertical integration

The associations of the enterprises as vertical integrated structures, the beginning of privatization of holding petroleum companies, the creation of an infrastructure for the shares market, coming into existence of financial and industrial groups and consortia for participation in international projects. 

Electricity reforms in a number of countries have not been so radical as to dramatically alter vertical and horizontal industrial structures. In many European countries, incumbent companies were allowed to retain their vertical integration between generation and supply, and were not obliged to divest some of their production units. Furthermore, over the years such companies have expanded abroad and have thereby generally increased their horizontal integration by mergers and acquisitions in other markets. 

It will be thus necessary to introduce a hierarchical approach. Lapkin et al. [65] have proposed four vertical hierarchy levels (i) product and process, (ii) company, (iii) infrastructure and (iv) society. Each level should reflect different boundary limits and use an appropriate choice of indicators. It is proposed also that the choice of appropriate indicators depends on the speciflcs of the industry sector and even on the types of products. The indicators should reflect speciflc by-products, wastes and emissions that are characteristic of the process or the product. Of course, alimit of the approach is how to make uniform the comparison between diflferent industrial sectors. On the other hand, we have already remarked that industrial chemical production is different from other manufacture industrial sectors, because (i) it includes very different types of productions, from several thousand tons per day in refinery to kg amounts per day in fine chemical production and (ii) it is characterized by a highly integrated structure in which a large part of the products are the input for other chemical processes. 

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