End Market Alchemy

In order to deal with the current economic climate, the global chemical industry will have to go beyond cost-cutting measures and look for new sources of value creation and growth. Achieving this will require the industry to expand its perspective to a broader, more holistic view of end markets.

The Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited’s (DTTL) Global Manufacturing Industry group has developed "End market alchemy: Expanding perspectives to drive growth in the global chemical industry" to provide insights to help the global chemical industry explore and address relevant unmet needs that can help them unleash potential value in end markets.  

According to the report, one approach to unlocking new market opportunities is finding unmet needs through megatrends. These megatrends present challenges that can be solved through new products and solutions that are developed as a direct response to unmet needs of current and future customers in the various existing and developing end markets, while taking into account the risk and complexity for a chemical company to approach an unmet need in one end market.

The report assesses approximately 10 years of financial information for 230 chemical companies and 3,000 end market companies, and assigns the data to industry groups and end markets segments. The analysis includes 16 end markets that encompass 55 segments, including personal care, health care, household, nutrition, apparel and textiles, transportation, mining and metals, machinery, automotive, construction and infrastructure, electronics, paper and packaging, commercial printing, energy, water, and agriculture.