ICIS has announced its annual ICIS Top 100 Chemical Companies listing of global producers ranked by 2019 sales.
This year, Germany’s BASF regained the lead as the world’s largest chemical company with sales of USD 66.6 billion in 2019, a decline of 1.5% from 2018.
Coming in second was 2018’s leader, China-based Sinopec with USD 63.2 billion in chemicals sales, followed by US-based Dow in third with USD 43.0 billion in revenues, US-based LyondellBasell in fourth with USD 34.7 billion in sales and Saudi Arabia’s SABIC in fifth with USD 32.5 billion in sales.
“2019 was a tough year for the global chemicals sector with declines in sales and profits almost across the board amid a manufacturing slowdown. This has been overshadowed by the coronavirus pandemic in 2020 which will hit results even harder,” says Joseph Chang, Global Editor of ICIS Chemical Business.
The synchronised global manufacturing slowdown along with overcapacity in key chemicals markets made for a difficult 2019.
“The Top 100 companies generated revenues of USD 1.05 trillion in 2019 – down 4.9% on 2018 on a comparable, as reported, basis. The data show that 33 of the companies in this listing reported a fall in sales of more than 10%,” says Nigel Davis, ICIS Insight Editor.
This compares to a robust 2018 where the ICIS Top 100 Chemical Companies generated combined sales of USD 1.2 trillion, up 10% from a year earlier.
The ICIS Top 100 Chemical Companies ranking is available for download as a PDF here.
Note: Currency conversions to US dollars for the ranking are based on year-end 2019 exchange rates.
