Specialty Chemicals are chemical products that are the basis of many other industrial sectors. This is because products are sold based on their performance or function rather than their composition. They can be a single chemical entity or formulation whose composition greatly influences the performance and processing of a customer’s product. Some categories of specialty chemicals are adhesives, agricultural chemicals, cleaning agents, dyes, cosmetic additives, construction chemicals, food additives, fragrances, lubricants, paints, polymers, textile auxiliaries, and many more. The industrial sectors such as automotive, aerospace, food, cosmetics, agriculture, manufacturing, and textiles are very dependent on products from this product. To get to know more about these products, let’s look at the following explanation.

Before going deeper into discussing, it’s good to learn first about the classification of chemicals. Based on the commercial classification of chemicals, chemicals produced by the chemical industry can be divided into three broad categories:

Commodity chemicals

Commodity chemicals are produced in large quantities and in general, their application can be traced back to their chemical structure. For this reason, if you examine two commodities produced by two different suppliers, but with the same chemical structure and purity, they can be said to be identical and they can be easily exchanged. Not only that, but these commodity chemicals are also usually produced by factories continuously, and generally, the costs are relatively low. Examples of commodity chemicals are ammonia and ethylene oxide.

Specialty Chemicals

Based on the brief explanation above, these products can be defined as ingredients used based on their performance or function. Therefore, in addition to “effect” chemicals, they are sometimes referred to as “performance” chemicals or “formulation” chemicals. They can be unique molecules or a mixture of molecules known as formulations. Physical and chemical characteristics of specialty chemicals in the form of a single molecule or a mixture of formulated molecules or mixture composition will affect the performance of the final product. This is a distinguishing component of the services provided by specialty chemicals when they are compared to other sub-sectors of the chemical industry such as fine chemicals, commodity chemicals, petrochemicals, and pharmaceuticals.

These products have the following characteristics:

1.  Sold based on customer needs

2.  Small production volume

3.  Often sold to a large number of customers, with relatively small purchases

4.  Lubricants, anti-oxidation, anti-corrosion and pesticide ingredients

Some categories of chemicals are adhesives, agrochemicals, cleaning agents, colors, cosmetic additives, construction chemicals, elastomers, flavors, food additives, fragrances, industrial gases, lubricants, paints, polymers, surfactants, and textile auxiliaries. While the industrial sectors like automotive, aerospace, food, cosmetics, agriculture, manufacturing, and textiles are also the categories of the chemicals, but highly dependent on the products.

How is it Different from Commodity Chemicals?

Commodity chemicals are sold based on composition rather than function. In commodity chemicals, there is no difference in the use of chemicals sold by one producer and another, and competition is based on price. This is unlike specialty chemicals, the competitive strength lies in each of its unique formulations. As the name implies, this product can specialize in a product and become a distinguishing component from one product to another.

What Roles Do Specialty Chemicals Companies Play?

As might be expected, specialty chemical companies offer more specialized services than straight toll blenders, for example.

For one thing, they may be able to aid in the development of chemistry development, such as introducing innovative production techniques or tools into the process to make it more cost-effective.

Similar to SML, capable of fulfilling its role as a distributor that can optimize its R&D to customize formulations to produce specialty chemicals that match the preferences of suppliers and customers.

Meanwhile, a specialty chemical company may also own some intellectual property in the form of proprietary chemicals they can manufacture and sell to you, either as a raw material or a finished product. In this case, they will be able to provide you with critical insight into the marketing and technical aspects of the chemical. 

And speaking of raw materials, a specialty chemical company will often be able to source the necessary raw materials to make either your custom product or their proprietary molecule, as well as handle packaging for you.