Fine Chemicals, Commodities and Specialties

Following the commercial classification of chemicals, chemicals produced by

chemical industry The chemical industry comprises the companies that produce industrial chemicals. Central to the modern world economy, it converts raw materials (oil, natural gas, air, water, metals, and minerals) into more than 70,000 different products. The ...

can be divided essentially into three broad categories: *

commodity chemicals Commodity chemicals (or bulk commodities or bulk chemicals) are a group of chemicals that are made on a very large scale to satisfy global markets. The average prices of commodity chemicals are regularly published in the chemical trade magazines an ...

: are chemicals produced in large quantities and in general their applications can be traced back to their chemical structure; for this reason, two commodities produced by two different suppliers but with the same chemical structure and purity are almost identical and they can be easily interchanged; they are produced by continuous plant and in general their cost is relatively low; examples of chemical commodities are

ammonia Ammonia is an inorganic compound of nitrogen and hydrogen with the formula . A stable binary hydride, and the simplest pnictogen hydride, ammonia is a colourless gas with a distinct pungent smell. Biologically, it is a common nitrogenous was ...

and

ethylene oxide Ethylene oxide is an organic compound with the chemical formula, formula . It is a cyclic ether and the simplest epoxide: a three-membered Ring (chemistry), ring consisting of one oxygen atom and two carbon atoms. Ethylene oxide is a colorless a ...

; *

speciality chemicals Speciality chemicals (also called specialties or effect chemicals) are particular chemical products which provide a wide variety of effects on which many other industry sectors rely. Some of the categories of speciality chemicals are adhesives, agr ...

(or specialty chemicals): are constituted by a mixture of different chemical substances, that is designed and produced in order to be applied to a specific application; the formulation of specialities is the result of scientific researches carried out by the producer company, so each formulation and associated properties are unique and for this reason in the majority of the cases it is not possible to easily interchange two different specialities produced by two different suppliers; examples of applications of speciality chemicals are

pharmaceuticals industry This listing is limited to those independent companies and subsidiaries notable enough to have their own articles in Wikipedia. Both going concerns and defunct firms are included, as well as firms that were part of the pharmaceutical industry ...

and

agriculture Agriculture or farming is the practice of cultivating plants and livestock. Agriculture was the key development in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that enabled people to ...

; they are produced by batch plant and in general their cost is higher if compared with commodity chemicals; *

Fine chemicals In chemistry, fine chemicals are complex, single, pure chemical substances, produced in limited quantities in multipurpose plants by multistep batch chemical or biotechnological processes. They are described by exacting specifications, used fo ...

: as the commodity chemicals, they are chemical substances characterized by their chemical structure, but, on the contrary of commodity chemicals, they are produced in a small quantity; fine chemicals can be used as components in the formulation of speciality chemicals; for example active ingredients of pharmaceutical drugs are fine chemicals, but the pharmaceutical drug is a speciality chemical; examples of applications of fine chemicals are: pharmaceuticals industry, agriculture, photography chemicals and electronic chemicals; they are produced by batch plant and in general their cost is relatively high.

Kline matrix

Kline matrix was presented for the first time in 1970 by Charles Howard Kline. It is a more detailed classification of the previous one, that distinguished chemical commodities into two subclasses, called respectively "true commodities" and "pseudocommodities". In general the classification of chemical industry products by the Kline matrix is related to the chemicals' worldwide production (measured for example in tons/year) and to their

value added In business, total value added is calculated by tabulating the unit value added (measured by summing unit profit sale price and production cost">Price.html" ;"title="he difference between Price">sale price and production cost], unit depreciatio ...

.Emisawa Hiroshi, "How to Manage for Maximum Profit."
/ref> Following this classification, the chemical industry products are divided into four categories: * ''true commodity'': high production and high value added * ''fine chemical'': low production and high value added * ''pseudo-commodity'' (or ''branded commodity''): high production and low value added * ''speciality chemical'': low production and low value added.

Basic chemicals

The concept of basic chemicals is very close to chemical commodities. In fact basic chemicals are chemical substances used as a starting material for the production of a wide variety of other chemicals; for this reason they are in general commodities, because they are highly demanded. Some examples of basic chemicals are: ethylene, benzene, chlorine and sulfuric acid. http://scuole.federchimica.it/Universita/Schede_di_approfondimento_sui_settori/Chimica_di_base.aspx

High production volume chemical

High Production Volume Chemicals, High Production Volume (HPV) Chemicals is another commercial classification of chemical substances very close to chemical commodities. This categories is used in US and includes all the chemicals produced or imported by US in an amount higher than 1 million pounds.{{Cite web , url=http://scorecard.goodguide.com/chemical-profiles/def/hpv.html , title=High Production Volume (HPV) Chemicals , access-date=2014-06-16 , archive-date=2019-03-14 , archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190314185021/http://scorecard.goodguide.com/chemical-profiles/def/hpv.html , url-status=dead It is supposed that the number of commercialized chemical products is around 70,000 and around 5% of them are High production volume chemicals.

Kline matrix

Basic chemicals

High production volume chemical

References

See also