W. R. Grace & Co. engages in the production and sale of specialty chemicals and specialty materials worldwide.
Segments
The company operates through two segments, Grace Catalysts Technologies (Catalysts Technologies); and Grace Materials Technologies (Materials Technologies).
Catalysts Technologies segment
This segment includes catalysts and related products and technologies used in petrochemical, refining, and other chemical manufacturing applications. The company’s customers include plasti...
W. R. Grace & Co. engages in the production and sale of specialty chemicals and specialty materials worldwide.
Segments
The company operates through two segments, Grace Catalysts Technologies (Catalysts Technologies); and Grace Materials Technologies (Materials Technologies).
Catalysts Technologies segment
This segment includes catalysts and related products and technologies used in petrochemical, refining, and other chemical manufacturing applications. The company’s customers include plastics and chemicals manufacturers, as well as oil refiners.
Products and Services
Polyolefin and Chemical Catalysts (also referred to as Specialty Catalysts)
The company provides process technology for polypropylene and a range of catalysts and supports for specialized processes in the chemical value chain, from plastics to petrochemicals.
The company operates as an integrated supplier of polyolefin catalyst solutions across all process and catalyst technologies. It offers customers a portfolio of polyolefin catalysts technologies that enable the production of resins. Polyolefin catalysts are used to produce plastics, including HDPE (high density polyethylene), LLDPE (linear low density polyethylene) and PP (polypropylene). Applications include packaging, consumer/housewares, food packaging, construction, and automotive segments providing recyclable, lightweight, durable and versatile materials.
The business consists of four major segments, including UNIPOL PP Process Licensing, PP Catalysts, PE Catalysts, and Chemical Catalysts.
Polyethylene (PE) Catalysts/Polypropylene Catalysts/Catalyst Supports: Used in the production of PE and PP thermoplastic resins, which can be customized to enhance the performance of a range of industrial and consumer end-use applications, including high pressure pipe, geomembranes, food packaging, automotive parts, medical devices, and textiles; non-phthalate catalysts allow customers to produce phthalate-free PP products and cleaner, clearer PP products; catalysts that allow for the lightweighting of automobiles by replacing steel parts with PP while meeting demanding performance standards of automakers.
The company’s PP catalysts serve multiple process technologies, including UNIPOL PP, with optimized sizes, shapes, and composition tailored for each process requirement. It also offers external donor technologies that are combined with the company’s catalysts, providing customers with resin product differentiation advantages. The company’s PP catalysts brands include CONSISTA, SHAC, LYNX, POLYTRAK, and HYAMPP.
The company’s PE catalysts portfolio, with supporting research and development and technical service, offers existing producers the resin properties utilizing the three main types of Metallocene, Chromium, and Ziegler catalysts. Products include catalyst components and finished catalysts across all three systems and are offered as merchant products or custom developments. It offers PE catalysts under MAGNAPORE, SYLOPOL, and LYNX brand names.
Gas-Phase Polypropylene Process Technology Licensing: The company provides licensees with a capability to manufacture PP products having a spectrum of performance attributes enabling customers to manufacture products for an array of end-use applications. Brands include UNIPOL Polypropylene Process Technology and UNIPOL UNIPPAC Process Control Software.
The UNIPOL PP Process Licensing provides plant design and operational technology to polymer producers. The company is a major technology licensor, offering the advantages of a gas-phase process to produce resins. UNIPOL PP licensees also have access to its services and its Process Control software to improve their overall plant lifetime performance.
Chemical Catalysts: The company’s chemical catalysts include hydrogenation and dehydrogenation catalyst products used in various petrochemical chain conversions and fine chemical production.
Chemical Catalysts has two product lines, such as RANEY and DAVICAT. RANEY catalyst products are used in a range of niche hydrogenation applications, such as butanediol, sorbitol, and amines. DAVICAT catalysts and catalyst carriers extend the company-wide material science expertise in silicas, aluminas, and zeolites into various petrochemicals and fine chemicals applications.
Refining Technologies
Fluid Catalytic Cracking (FCC) Catalysts and Additives: The company develops and manufactures FCC catalysts and additives that are designed to enable petroleum refiners to improve product yields and quality. Its FCC products also enable refiners to reduce emissions from their FCC units and reduce sulfur content in the transportation fuels they produce.
The company’s FCC catalysts are used to crack the hydrocarbon chains in distilled crude oil to produce transportation fuels, such as gasoline and diesel fuels, and feeds for the production of petrochemicals. Its brands include MIDAS, IMPACT, NEKTOR, GENESIS, ACHIEVE, FUSION, VIP-R, RIVE TECHNOLOGY, and MOLECULAR HIGHWAY.
The company’s FCC additives are used to reduce sulfur in gasoline, maximize propylene production from refinery FCC units, and reduce emissions of sulfur oxides, nitrogen oxides, and carbon monoxide from refinery FCC units. Its FCC additives brands include D-PRISM, GSR, SURCA, ZAVANTI, OLEFINSULTRA, DESOX, DENOX, CP, and OXYBURN.
Hydroprocessing Catalysts (HPC): The company markets majority of its HPC through its Advanced Refining Technologies LLC (ART) joint venture with Chevron Products Company (Chevron). It holds a 50% economic interest in ART. The company established ART to combine its technology with that of Chevron and to develop, market, and sell hydroprocessing catalysts to customers in the petroleum refining industry worldwide.
The company supplies HPC designed for processing high resid content feedstocks. It offers products for fixed-bed resid hydrotreating, on-stream catalyst replacement, and ebullating-bed resid hydrocracking processes.
The company also offers a line of catalysts, customized for individual refiners, used in distillate hydrotreating to produce ultra-low sulfur content gasoline and diesel fuel, including the company’s SmART CATALYST SYSTEM and APART Catalyst Systems. These products are designed to help refiners to reduce the sulfur content of their products.
The company’s ENRICH catalysts, which are marketed by it rather than ART, enable the coprocessing of bio-based feedstocks at refineries.
The company has rights to sell hydrocracking and lubes hydroprocessing catalysts to licensees of Chevron Lummus Global and other petroleum refiners for unit refills.
The company’s HPC brands include ICR, HOP, SmART Catalyst System, APART, LS Catalyst Platform, HSLS Catalyst Platform, HCRC Catalyst Platform, DCS Catalyst Platform, ECAD Catalyst Platform, GR, and ENRICH.
Marketing
The company uses a global organization of direct sales professionals to market its polyolefin catalysts, polypropylene process technology, and chemical catalysts, that seeks to maintain close working relationships with its customers. The company’s global direct sales force is complemented by a network of distributors and agents in the Asia Pacific and, to a lesser extent, the Americas and the Middle East.
The company uses a global organization of technical professionals, including a direct sales force, with experience in refining processes, catalyst development, and catalyst applications to market its refining catalysts and additives. The company sells a major portion of its HPC through multiple-year supply agreements with its geographically diverse customer base.
Seasonality
Under traditional patterns, sales of FCC catalysts have tended to be lower in the first calendar quarter (year ended December 31, 2020) due to maintenance outages taken prior to the shift in production by refineries from home heating oil for the winter season to gasoline production for the summer season. FCC catalysts and ebullating-bed hydroprocessing catalysts are consumed at a relatively steady rate and are replaced regularly. Since the company’s customers periodically shut down their refining processes to replace fixed-bed hydroprocessing catalysts in bulk, its hydroprocessing catalyst sales to any customer can vary substantially over the course of a year and between years based on that customer’s catalyst replacement schedule.
Competition
The company competes with Univation, LyondellBasell, PQ, and Lummus Novolen Technology. The company’s principal global FCC catalyst competitors are Albemarle Corporation, BASF, and SINOPEC. Its principal global competitors in FCC additives are Johnson Matthey, Albemarle Corporation, and BASF. The company’s principal global competitors in hydroprocessing catalysts are Shell Catalysts (formerly Criterion), Albemarle Corporation, Haldor Topsoe, UOP, and Axens.
Materials Technologies segment
This segment includes specialty materials, including silica-based and silica-alumina-based materials used in pharmaceutical/consumer, coatings, and chemical process applications. The company’s customers include pharmaceutical companies, consumer products manufacturers, coatings manufacturers, emission control system manufacturers, petrochemical and natural gas processors, and plastics manufacturers.
Silica-based Products: The company manufactures functional additives and process aids, such as silica gel, colloidal silica, zeolitic adsorbents, precipitated silica and silica-aluminas, for a variety of applications and end-use industries. It also custom manufactures fine chemical intermediates and regulatory starting materials used primarily in the pharmaceutical and nutritional supplements industries.
Products and Services
Pharma/Consumer: The company offers specialty materials used as additives, intermediates, and purification aids for pharmaceuticals, nutraceuticals, toothpaste, beer, food, and cosmetic segments, including pharmaceutical and nutraceutical excipients, carrier for oily APIs, and drug delivery under SYLOID, LUDOX, SYLOID XDP, and SILSOL brand names; fine chemicals, such as regulatory starting materials and intermediates, primarily peptide building blocks, specialty amino acids, chiral boronic acids, and esters; toothpaste abrasives and thickening agents under SYLODENT, SYLOBLANC, and SIDENT brand names; free-flow agents, anticaking agents, heating agents, tableting aids, and desiccants for food and pharma packaging, as well as cosmetic additives and carriers for flavor, fragrance, or other active ingredients under PERKASIL, SYLOID, and SYLOSIV brand names; edible oil and biofuel refining agents, stabilizers and clarification aids for beer, juices, and other beverages under TRISYL and DARACLAR brands; and chromatography purification products under DAVISIL, VYDAC, and VYKING brand names.
Coatings: Functional additives for wood, coil, general industrial, and architectural coatings that provide surface effects and corrosion protection for metal substrates, including matting agents, anticorrosion pigments, TiO2 extenders and moisture scavengers for paints and lacquers under SYLOID, SHIELDEX, SYLOSIV, and SYLOWHITE brand names; additives for matte, semi-glossy and glossy ink receptive coatings on ink jet papers, photo paper, and commercial wide-format print media under SYLOJET, DURAFILL, and LUDOX brands; paper retention aids, functional fillers, and paper frictionizers under DURAFILL and LUDOX brand names; and defoamers actives under ZEOFLO and ZEOFOAM brands.
Chemical Process: Functional materials for use in plastics, rubber, tire, and metal casting, and adsorbent products for petrochemical, natural gas, and other specialized applications, including reinforcing agents for rubber and tires under the PERKASIL brand name; inorganic binders for precision investment casting and refractory applications and surface modification aids for metal and ceramic substrates under the LUDOX brand name; static adsorbents for dual pane windows and refrigerant applications, moisture scavengers, and package desiccants under PHONOSORB, SYLOSIV, CRYOSIV, and PROTEKSORB brand names; chemical metal polishing aids and formulations for chemical mechanical planarization/electronics applications under POLIEDGE and LUDOX brand names; antiblocking additives for plastic films to prevent adhesion of layers in manufacturing under the SYLOBLOC brand name; and process adsorbents used in petrochemical and natural gas processes for such applications as ethylene-cracked-gas-drying, natural gas drying and sulfur removal under the SYLOBEAD brand name.
Marketing
The company uses country-based direct sales forces and further support its customers with application-specific technical customer service teams to market its Materials Technologies products.
Strategy
The key elements of the company’s strategy are to invest to accelerate growth and extend its competitive advantages; and acquire to build its technology and manufacturing capabilities for its customers.
Intellectual Property
The company benefits from the use of trade secret information, including know-how and other proprietary information relating to majority of its products and processing technologies in all of its businesses, including but not limited to, its business in licensing UNIPOL Polypropylene Process Technology.
GRACE, the GRACE logo (and any other use of the term ‘Grace’ as a tradename), as well as the other trademarks, service marks, or trade names used are trademarks, service marks, or trade names, registered in the United States and/or other countries, of the company or its operating units, except as otherwise indicated. The company and/or its affiliates are licensed to use the UNIPOL and UNIPOL UNIPPAC trademarks in the area of polypropylene. ART and ADVANCED REFINING TECHNOLOGIES are trademarks, registered in the United States and/or other countries, of Advanced Refining Technologies LLC.
Governmental Regulations
The company is subject, along with other manufacturers of specialty chemicals, to regulations under various regional, national, provincial, state and local Environment, Health, Safety, and Security (EHSS) laws and regulations relating to the manufacture, storage, handling, transportation, disposal and stewardship of chemicals and other materials.
The company extends the basic elements of the American Chemistry Council’s RESPONSIBLE CARE program to all its locations worldwide. The company’s EHSS Policy and RESPONSIBLE CARE MANAGEMENT SYSTEM guide the company, its operating segments, and its facilities worldwide in systematically managing the environmental, health, safety, process safety, product safety, security, and sustainability aspects of its operations.
History
W. R. Grace & Co. was founded in 1854. The company was incorporated in 1997.
The Analyst Price Target shows the analysts’ low, high, and average target at a glance.
