Top U.S. Chemical Companies

So where are they today In industry, these numbers are very hard to come by. Madeleine Jacobs, editor in chief of C EN, took the approach of perusing the annual reports of the top U.S. chemical companies. In 1997, only 4 percent of the upper management listed in the annual reports of the top 19 U.S. chemical producers were women, with the majority of these holding staff titles. Numbers on technical staff are virtually impossible to find. A 1998 study of Fortune 500 corporations by Catalyst, the nonprofit organization that aims at maximizing opportunities for women in management and executive positions, showed that fewer than 4 percent of the chairman, CEO, and VP titles were held by women. Only 11.2 percent of corporate officers were women, and they projected very slow growth rates (13 percent in 2000, 17 percent in 2005). 

Table 5.13 The Top U.S. Chemical Companies Ranked by Total Assets...

Top 20 U.S. Chemical Companies Listed by 1996 Sales (Sales in Millions... 

Top U.S. companies with inorganic chemical manufacturing operations are listed in Table 22.5. 

Top U.S. Companies With Inorganic Chemical Manufacturing Operations... 

Table 5.11 Percentage of Total Chemical Sales of the Top 50 U.S. Chemical Producers Accounted for by Oil Companies, 1975-1997...

U.S. Over 55,000 chemicals are commercially produced, but only 10% of these account for over 99.9% of production and are made in excess of 1 million Ib/yr in the U.S. The top chemical companies have a small percentage of sales compared to other industries like automobiles, airplanes, tires, and glass, where 80-99% of sales are taken by the top eight companies or less. Diversity of products in companies has increased in the last few years. Before 1940 chemical companies sold nothing but chemicals. Although some are primarily chemical, others have diversified so that it is possible to have chemicals account for a smaller percentage of the company s sales. Corporations such as the petroleum companies have chemical sales with a very low percentage of total sales. 

Table 1.18 lists the highest 25 of the top 50 chemical companies in the world, also published by Chemical and Engineering News annually, ranked by chemical sales. The full list includes 15 countries. The U.S. dominates the list with a total of 17 companies. Other countries represented are the following Japan, 6 Germany, 5 United Kingdom, 5 France, 4 ... 

Since pollution prevention first entered the environmental lexicon in the 1980s, it has become a touchstone of U.S. environmental policy. To succeed, pollution prevention programs need sustained top management support and defined links to the company s core business activities. Equally important, the values represented in the program must fit with the academic institution, company, or individual s existing values. For example, syntheses that minimize wastes are environmentally Mendly and may provide quality improvements and cost and energy savings. Environmental consciousness should be incorporated early into chemical research (Lnnt and Bowen, 1996). 

The top 50 U.S. companies were obtained from the 1998 Fortune Directory of the 500 largest industrial corporations ranked according to revenue (For-tiine, April 27, 1998). The top 50 foreign companies were obtained from the Fortune Directory of the 500 world s largest corporations Fortune, August 3, 1998). The data on the top 50 chemical companies in the world were compiled from Chemical and Engineering News Facts and Figures issues. 

ICI. For many years this has been the U.K. s largest chemical company and indeed was always placed in the top five in the world. In 1993 the decision... 

Although Japan s chemical industry is second only to that of the U.S.A., most of its production is for home use. Even the Netherlands, whose chemicals production is far below that of Japan, outranks it both for exports and imports. Another feature of the Japanese chemical industry is its organizational structure. Although it took some time for a Japanese company to feature in the top twenty chemical companies. Table 4.10 shows that four are now included, and all of these improved their positions in 1993. However, there are still none amongst the top 10. Contrast this with Germany where 4 companies are also listed, but with 3 of these in the top 4 and they dominate the German chemical industry. The Japanese chemical industry must therefore consist of a large number of medium- and smallsized companies. 

To investigate the distribution of these different types of firms, we constructed a sample of leading U.S., Western European and Japanese chemical companies. These are the top five producers, ranked by production capacity, in each of the three regions in a sample of 123 chemical products (not including pharmaceuticals). We divided these companies into three... 

The swings in the chlor-alkali industry during the 1980s, coupled with environmental pressures on the use of mercury and asbestos in chlor-alkali cells, led to numerous plant closures. In 1989 there were 26 U.S. companies producing chlorine at 51 sites with an operating capacity of 12,275 short tons. Dow Chemical U.S.A. accounted for almost a third of U.S. capacity. The top four producers shown in Table 12.20 accounted for over 70 percent of the installed capacity. 

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