BASF and Dow hold the top two spots in this year’s Chemical & Engineering News survey of the top 50 chemical producers, with 2007 chemicals sales of $65.04 billion and $53.51 billion, an increase of 20% and 9%, respectively. The aggregate profit margin for the top 50 firms was 10.4%, up from last year’s 9.5%. Unlike last year, there was not a large disparity between the top five companies and the remaining firms. The other top five companies were Shell, Ineos and Exxon Mobil, with 2007 chemicals sales of $45.91 billion, $37.69 billion and $36.83 billion, a respective increase of 26%, 13% and 8%. Exxon Mobil and SABIC reported the largest growth in capital spending in 2007 at 136% and 119%, respectively. Reliance and SABIC had the highest capital expenditures last year at $9.82 billion and $7.11 billion, respectively. Four companies spent more than $1 billion on R&D in 2007: BASF ($1.88 billion), DuPont ($1.34 billion), Dow ($1.31 billion) and Bayer ($1.16 billion). Among the top 50, 12 companies are American, 21 are European, and eight are Japanese. They made up 25.5%, 45.1%, and 11.8% of the top 50’s sales, respectively. Rest-of-world firms represented 17.9% of sales, compared to 16.2% in 2006. Source: Chemical & Engineering News