Apart from life sciences, specialty chemicals -and therefore also their active ingredients, commodities or fine chemicals, as the case may be- are used ubiquitously, in both industrial applications, such as biocides and corrosion inhibitors in cooling water towers, and consumer applications, such as personal care and household products. The active ingredients extend from high-price / low-volume fine chemicals, used for liquid crystal displays to large-volume / low-price amino acids used as feed additives.
fine chemicals merchant market size, growth potential
Examples of applications in eight areas, ranging from adhesives to specialty polymers, are listed in Table 8.  Overall, the attractiveness for the fine chemical industry is smaller than the life science industry. The total market, expressed in finished product sales, amounts to $150–200 billion, or about one fourth of the pharma market. The embedded fine chemicals account for an estimated $15 billion (see Table 5). Further disadvantages are the backward integration of the big players, e.g. Akzo-Nobel, Netherlands; Ajinomoto, Japan; Danone, France; Everlight Chemical Industrial Corp., Taiwan; Evonik-Degussa, Germany; Givaudan and Nestlé, Switzerland, Novozymes, Denmark, Procter & Gamble, and Unilever USA. Last but not least, innovation is rather based on new formulations of existing products, rather than the development of new fine chemicals. It is most likely to happen in application areas unrelated to human health (where NCEs are subject to very extensive testing).