The presence of many chemical companies and refineries within Europe’s most important logistical hub makes Rotterdam a petrochemical hotspot. It is the ultimate transit port for your cargo or for the development of new chemical industry initiatives, and a great place to establish your business. Other factors that make it even more interesting include the high safety standards and the unparalleled infrastructure, digital infrastructure, facilities and synergy advantages.
For the petrochemical industry, doing business in Rotterdam also means participating in and profiting from the energy transition and digitisation opportunities: fit for the future!
Demand for chemicals is also expected to recover slightly in the United States (2024: +1.1%, 2023: –1.0%) following the previous year, which was characterized by destocking and weak industrial growth. We anticipate slight growth for most customer industries in the manufacturing sector. Further growth is also expected for the automotive industry in North America. However, developments remain uncertain against the backdrop of high interest rates and the associated risk of recession, particularly with regard to the construction sector.
The Chemical Industry is estimated to generate approximately three trillion US dollars a year in annual sales and supplies many markets with essential materials that are critical to making each a success through utilizing different processes, material, and operations. In classification of the chemical industry there are several ways of examining the sub segments. From a business perspective, it has been often been useful to analyze the chemical industry into two primary segments 1) Bulk Chemicals and 2) Specialty and Fine Chemicals.
Bulk chemicals produces material at the lowest cost with a focus on production innovation while specialty and fine chemicals focuses on product innovation and responding to rapid time to market product lifecycles. In general, the production process for manufacturing that supports the business driver in bulk chemicals is continuous process applications and with fine and specialty chemical, it has traditionally been batch process applications.

As global competition intensifies, the chemical industry is becoming more polarized along these two models. Material intermediates and their corresponding supply chains in the chemical industry are increasingly losing their margins at intermediate materials production. Every business segment in the Chemical industry must determine if their chemical product is either a commodity with a focus on a becoming a low cost producer and optimizing a production system that produces cost competitive material or if they are a specialized materials solution provider maintaining a production system with maximum flexibly to meet rapidly changing market demands.