Merchant fine chemical market

Table 12.6 Breakdown of the Merchant Fine-Chemical Market...

While the United States represents the biggest fine chemicals market, for historic reasons the leading producers (Degussa, Lonza, DSM, etc.) are based in Europe. The merchant fine chemicals market is still a highly fragmented one with the top ten producers having a combined market share of less than 20% [17],... 

In Table 9.2, the approximately 75 billion fine-chemical market is subdivided into major applications according to their relevance, namely, fine chemicals for pharmaceuticals, agrochemicals, and specialty chemicals outside life sciences. Furthermore, a distinction is made between captive (in-house) production and merchant market. 

The new production capacity that has come onstream in Asia since the mid-1990s has allowed the fine-chemical companies in these countries to capture a close to 50% share of the global merchant market for API-for-generics, the only segment of the industry where demand has developed favorably lately (see text below). The pharmaceutical industry itself, plagued by underutilized capacity, has gone more aggressively after third-party business. 

Flavors account for the largest share, approximately 40% of the market, followed by fragrances, 35% aroma chemicals, 13% and essential oils, respectively natural extracts (see text above), 12%. Aroma chemicals, that is, the fine chemicals used in the F F formulations, are produced both for captive use and for the merchant market (see Table 11.13). 

In 2001 it was estimated that the world merchant market for catalysts was worth ca. US 25 billion, divided roughly equally between refining, petrochemicals, polymers, environmental (20-25% each) and with about 11% being used in fine chemicals. Refining is about the production of fuels (Chapter 3, Box 2), petrochemicals cover many of the basic commodity chemicals and the monomers required for the polymer industries fine chemicals include pharmaceuticals and agrochemicals, as well as flavours and fragrances and environmental is about exhaust gas and waste product clean-up. Vehicle catalytic converters use catalysts, as does the production of the main tonnage polymers polyethylene, polypropylene, polystyrene, polyvinyl chloride and polyethylene terephthalate. 

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