DowDuPont named by C&EN as top chemical company of 2018

C&EN has published its list of the top 50 chemical companies in the world for 2018, with DowDuPont taking the top spot with sales of $86 billion.

The top five places were completed by BASF, Sinopec, SABIC, and INEOS.

Despite ending BASF’s 12-year stint at the top of the rankings, DowDuPont will only be atop the rankings for this year, due to its split into three separate firms, Dow, DuPont, and Corteva Agriscience.

C&EN said: “For the global chemical industry, 2018 was another strong year, yet it showed signs of a slowdown, according to the survey. Sales rose healthily for the group during 2018, the fiscal year on which the survey is based.”

“Excluding PetroChina, which reported chemical sales for only 2018, chemical companies in the top 50 combined for $926.8 billion in chemical revenue, an increase of 13.4 per cent from the same companies’ sales the year before.”

“Earnings didn’t increase as much, an indication, possibly, that the market may be losing its steam. For the 48 chemical firms posting comparable year-over-year results, chemical operating profits rose only 3.4 per cent, to $110.1 billion.”

A fully interactive look at the analysis is available at https://cen.acs.org/sections/global-top-50.html