Specialty chemical

As a special chemistry with the chemical industry is called. The term is not clearly defined, but generally understood as including chemical products with the following characteristics:

• In the foreground is the effect, not the chemical nature
• The products are designed for specific applications, often even Custom made
• The proportion of the total cost is relatively low for the customer, but also plays an important role for its product
• Relatively small volumes and is often discontinuous production

Typical specialty chemical products are various additives such as flame retardants, light stabilizers and food additives. The classification of specialty chemicals is carried out either by customer industry (food) or function ( flame retardants ). Fine chemicals and active pharmaceutical ingredients have different business model (based on the purity of the substance ), but are nevertheless often counted for specialty chemicals. The transition between basic chemicals and specialty chemicals is fluid and can change over time.

The specialty chemicals company have a high expenditure on research and development, as they often can only exist in the market, if they are constantly developing new and innovative products. Also, the manufacturing cost is usually very high in relation to the basic chemicals produced in mass production. In exchange, but can also be very high prices achieved and the impact of raw material cost is lower. Specialty chemicals company often lead synthesis services on behalf of other companies that do not have the special know -how and manufacturing capabilities themselves.

In the late 1990s a number of specialty chemicals company created by the deconstruction of the chemical industry, important examples were Clariant (spin -off of the Sandoz Chemicals division in 1995, acquisition of specialty chemicals business of Hoechst 1997), Rhodia (Rhône- Poulenc spin-off in 1998 ), Ciba AG ( Novartis spin-off in 1997 ), Cognis (Henkel spin-off in 1999 ), Lonza Group ( Alusuisse spin-off in 1999 ). Meanwhile, many of these companies were acquired by diversified chemical companies such as BASF ( Ciba, Cognis) or Solvay (Rhodia ). Existing companies with a high proportion of specialty chemicals, for example, Altana, Clariant, Evonik Industries and Merck KGaA.

• Chemical Industry