Care Chemicals

General information

The Business AreaBusiness AreaFor the financial reporting, Clariant grouped its businesses in three core Business Areas: Care Chemicals, Catalysis, and Natural Resources.View entire glossary Care Chemicals comprises the Business Unit Industrial & Consumer Specialties (ICS). As a leading provider of specialty chemicals and application solutions for consumer care and industrial markets, Care Chemicals delivers high-performance ingredients and formulation expertise at the best cost‑to‑­performance ratio with an integrated value chain that responds quickly to consumer trends.

Care Chemicals sets a clear focus on highly attractive, high-­margin, and low-cyclicality segments. The business area operates in seven different markets: personal care, home care, crop solutions, paints and coatings, aviation, construction chemicals, and industrial lubricants. Offering approx. 2 000 products to around 5 000 customers, it operates in Europe, Middle East, and Africa, Asia-Pacific, North America, and Latin America. Approximately two-thirds of the business is consumer-facing in consumer care and industrial applications.

CARE CHEMICALS

OVERVIEW

The Business AreaBusiness AreaFor the financial reporting, Clariant grouped its businesses in three core Business Areas: Care Chemicals, Catalysis, and Natural Resources.View entire glossary Care Chemicals comprises Industrial & Consumer Specialities (ICS), which serves customers in the personal care, home care, paints and coatings, and crop solution markets.

APPLICATIONS

Business Unit Industrial & Consumer Specialities

• Automotive fluids
• Aviation
• Construction
• Crop solutions
• Gas treatment
• Heat transfer fluids
• Industrial and home care
• Industrial lubricants
• Paints and coatings
• Personal care
• Special solvents

PRIORITY SDGs

• SDG 2 Zero Hunger
• SDG 3 Good Health and Well-being
• SDG 6 Clean Water and Sanitation
• SDG 12 Responsible Consumption and Production
• SDG 15 Life on Land

The business area benefits from several business drivers:

• growing relevance of lifestyle-driven consumers focused on comfort and well-being;
• an increased interest in green and sustainable products that are based on natural ingredients and free of harmful substances;
• the desire of the agricultural industry to better fulfill global nutrition requirements;
• the general trend toward responsible production and consumption, including a demand for solutions that reduce the carbon footprint.

The business area provides formulation solutions with superior performance and a favorable sustainability profile. For example, the home care product Texcare® SRN 170 Terra provides a soil-­releasing sustainable polymer for laundry. The green multifaceted all-rounder polymer for laundry protects clothes by preventing soil from penetrating deep into fabric and facilitating the washing process. It features the EcoTain® label.

The business area’s skin care products also combine performance with sustainability. Ethience® Protect serves as a case in point. This eco-conscious active ingredient reinforces the skin barrier protection. It was developed in partnership with our current acquisition Beraca (see below).

Synergen® GA serves as an example for the many crop solutions of the business area. Synergen® GA is a sustainable multi-functional adjuvant for aqueous plant protection formulations based on sugar. The product is fully crop-compatible and exhibits zero phytotoxicity. It has a Renewable Carbon Index of 95 %, which means that 95 % of all carbons in this product come from renewable sources. Synergen® GA also carries the EcoTain® label.

Market dynamics in 2021

On the supply side, 2021 brought many challenges to industrial companies all over the world. Consequently, these developments also influenced the Business AreaBusiness AreaFor the financial reporting, Clariant grouped its businesses in three core Business Areas: Care Chemicals, Catalysis, and Natural Resources.View entire glossary Care Chemicals. The year was characterized by intense cost inflation for most raw materials, global logistics challenges, and rising energy costs. In the second half of the year, however, the business area was able to offset these developments through strong pricing and thanks to a continued recovery in global industrial end markets. This was parti­cularly true for industrial lubricants, coatings, and construction chemicals. Consumer market dynamics also accelerated in the second half of 2021.

In addition to these developments, 2021 also saw a growing world market for ethically produced sustainable products. For instance, the personal care and home care industries showed an increased interest in plant-based raw materials and low-carbon-footprint solutions. A growing number of end consumers preferred per­sonal care and home care cleaning products with milder product for­mu­lations that also offer powerful foaming and cleansing properties. At the same time, companies in the home care business were in need of more sustainable solutions, for example, detergents that provide full performance at lower temperatures.

How Business Area Care Chemicals created value in 2021

In the full year 2021, sales in the Business AreaBusiness AreaFor the financial reporting, Clariant grouped its businesses in three core Business Areas: Care Chemicals, Catalysis, and Natural Resources.View entire glossary Care Chemicals increased by 16 % organically, by 22 % in local currency, and by 20 % in Swiss francs. Both organic Industrial Applications sales as well as Consumer Care sales rose at double-digit rates. The absolute sales levels in Care Chemicals, excluding acquisitions, exceeded full year 2019 pre-pandemic levels. Industrial Applications sales rose strongly as demand recovered in the first half year and continued strengthening towards the end of the year. The Aviation business clearly picked up versus a particularly weak 2020, accompanied by solid expansion in Industrial Lubricants and Coatings as well. Consumer Care sales also increased in a mid-teen range in 2021 attributable to Crop Solutions and Home Care in particular.

The EBITDAEBITDAEarnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization.View entire glossary margin in the full year 2021 increased to 20.7 % from 19.4 %. This positive development resulted from strong volume expansion, which boosted operating leverage and pricing measures to address raw material cost headwinds, supply chain constraints, as well as energy and logistics cost increases. With the market trends described above, the business area has taken various steps to further improve its portfolio of innovative and sustainable products.

New partnerships and products

In July 2021, Clariant established a 51 % to 49 % joint venture with India Glycols Limited. The new company operates under the name Clariant IGL Specialty Chemicals Private Limited and focuses on renewable ethylene oxide derivatives. These materials are relevant for the rapidly growing consumer care market in India and neighboring countries and will also be marketed worldwide. The partnership strengthens Clariant’s core portfolio with renewable solutions for home care and personal care: the VITA range of bio-based and fully segregated nonionic surfactants and ethylene oxide derivatives. These products help to reduce fossil carbon from the value chain and support customers to achieve their sustainability and carbon-saving commitments.

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In August 2021, Clariant took another important step to strengthen the business area with sustainably sourced natural ingredients by acquiring the remaining 70 % stake in Beraca, a Brazilian personal care specialty company. The deal was closed on 25 October 2021, and Clariant now has full operational ownership. Beraca is located in the Amazon region and has an outstanding expertise in natural and organic certified ingredients such as fats, oils, and botanicals. These resources are collected and extracted from Brazil’s biodiversity in an environmentally sustainable production process that also promotes the development of communities. The acquisition is a relevant building block in the strategy of further strengthening individual core business areas through targeted acquisitions.

In partnership with Beraca, Care Chemicals has recently developed the product Ethience® Protect. The eco-conscious active ingredient from the Amazon provides relief for stressed skin. Ethience® Protect rebuilds and strengthens the natural protective shield of the skin and therefore improves its hydration, reduces its sensitivity, and provides it with a healthier look. Ethience® Protect is produced from the waste press cake generated in nut oil production, while the sourcing of the product is both transparent and fully traceable. The product received the BSB Innovation Award (Europe) as an active ingredient in the »Environment« category.

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Clariant’s new partnership with Polygal AG marks another step toward more natural skin care formulations. The cooperation fo­cuses on developing superior natural rheology modifiers for skin care formulations. These can support brands in embracing consumer calls for skin care products with a lower carbon footprint and good biodegradability. Plantasens® Biogum Tara is the first result of this partnership: The rheology modifier with a 100 % Renewable Carbon Index is based on Tara Gum and readily bio­degradable. At the same time, the product outperforms natural benchmarks, thereby overcoming traditional drawbacks of formulating with natural rheology modifiers.

The business area now offers polyalkylene glycols that can be used for producing electric vehicle fluids and as biodegradable base oils for lubricants. Following new data on biodegradability, a large range of polyalkylene glycols have now achieved EcoTain® approval. This offers customers proven sustainable high-per­formance alternatives to polyalphaolefins (PAOs). Tests showed that Clariant’s synthetic PAG base oils (notably Polyglycol E04 E and Polyglycol E03 A) largely outperformed a PAO benchmark with respect to certain key parameters such as energy efficiency, friction coefficient, heat transfer, and ecotoxicity/sustainability.

New locations

Combining sustainability needs and increased performance requirements is also the objective of Clariant’s new collaborative innovation center. Announced in July 2021 and to be located in the Charlotte area, the center will support North America’s paints and coatings industry in meeting the challenges of emerging trends. Customers in the region will benefit from a unique level of R&D and application testing support. The center will add 5 000 square feet of laboratories and offices to the existing capabilities at the location.

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Innovation activities

The 2021 financial year also saw notable digitization progress in the business area. This included high-throughput testing and data generation for the development of water dispersing agents, stabilizers and compatibilizers for environmentally friendly and high performing paints and coatings. Further, the customer portal ClariHub providing extensive product & application information has been launched for all segments.

Certifications and awards

The business area’s efforts for sustainable solutions in personal care and cleaning products are appreciated in the market: The American Chemistry Council awarded the GlucoTain® and GlucoPure® product ranges with the 2021 Sustainability Leadership Award in the category Product Safety, Innovation, and Transparency. These sugar-based surfactants for personal care and home care cleaning products perform just as effectively as conventional surfactants while showing a significantly lower emission profile. This is because the feedstocks for the product and the process to manufacture the ingredients result in a lower carbon footprint.

Ongoing developments

Clariant is a worldwide technology leader in mild surfactants, with a broad offering encompassing several technology platforms (i.e. GlucoTain®, HOSTAPON®, and Medialan™ ranges). Consequently, the Group can offer diverse performance properties to its formulator customers. Mild surfactants are a growing sector in Personal Care, driven by consumers seeking new mildness claims. These surfactants are invaluable in helping formulators respond to the need for mild cleansing hygiene, sensitive skin solutions, the ability to provide solid formats, and more natural ingredients. Clariant has been upgrading its mild surfactants range with additional claim substantiation, technical data, and sustainability features. The upgraded dataset enables Clariant’s customers to select the most appropriate mild surfactant according to the requirements of their brands: foaming characteristic, sensory attributes, mildness, cleansing efficiency, renewable carbon content and market ecolabel compatibility. In addition, the carbon footprint for the full range is available to support customers in selecting the most appropriate product to achieve their Scope 3 reduction targets.

Business Area Care Chemicals