Agricultural Products
Our Agricultural Products segment, develops, manufactures and sells a portfolio
of crop protection, professional pest control and lawn and garden products.
Our innovation and growth efforts focus on developing environmentally compatible
solutions that can effectively increase farmers’ yields and provide cost-effective
alternatives to older chemistries to which insects or weeds may have developed
resistance.
Agricultural Products provides a wide range of proprietary, branded products—based
on both patented and off-patent technologies—for global crop protection,
professional pest control, and lawn and garden markets. Product branding is
a prevalent industry practice used to help maintain and grow market share by
promoting end-user recognition and product and supplier reputation.
Insecticides represent the majority of our sales in the Agricultural Products
segment, particularly pyrethroid and carbamate chemistries, in which we maintain
leading market positions based on revenues. Our proprietary herbicides have
grown significantly over the last several years. Our herbicide portfolio primarily
targets niche uses and controls a wide variety of difficult-to-control weeds.
We are also selectively evaluating opportunities to enhance our market position
in fungicides, so that we can broaden our portfolio across the three major pesticide
categories, i.e. insecticides, herbicides and fungicides.
Industrial Chemicals
Our Industrial Chemicals segment, has low-cost positions in high volume inorganic
chemicals including soda ash and hydrogen peroxide, complemented by high value,
niche positions in specialty alkali, phosphorus and peroxygen products.
Industrial Chemicals serves a diverse group of markets, from economically-sensitive
industrial sectors to technology-intensive specialty markets. We process and
sell refined inorganic products that are sought by customers for their critical
reactivity or specific functionality in markets such as glass, detergents and
pulp and paper. In addition, we produce, purify and market higher value downstream
derivatives into specialized and customer-specific applications.
Alkali
Our alkali chemical division produces natural soda ash. Soda ash is used by
manufacturers in glass, chemical processing and detergent industries. To lesser
degrees, we also produce sodium bicarbonate, caustic soda and sodium sesquicarbonate.
Peroxygens
We produce hydrogen peroxide at production facilities in the United States,
Canada and Mexico, and, as described below, through our wholly-owned Foret subsidiary,
in Spain and the Netherlands. We also participate in a joint venture company
in Thailand. We sell hydrogen peroxide into the pulp and paper industry, and
to a lesser extent, in the chemical processing, environmental, electronics and
food industries. We are a leading North American producer of hydrogen peroxide
due in part to our broad product line, geographically-advantaged plant locations,
state-of-the-art processing technology and superior customer service.
Foret
Our European subsidiary, FMC Foret, S.A. (“Foret”), headquartered
near Barcelona, Spain, is a leading provider of chemical products to the detergent,
paper, textile, mining, and chemical industries. Foret operates six manufacturing
facilities across Europe, with market positions in phosphates, hydrogen peroxide,
percarbonates, sulfur derivatives, zeolites and silicates. Foret’s sales
efforts are focused in Europe, Africa and the Middle East, and in South America
mainly via Tripoliven, our Venezuelan joint-venture, in which Foret holds a
minority participation.
Specialty Chemicals
Our Specialty Chemicals segment, is focused on high-performance food ingredients,
pharmaceutical excipients and encapsulants, biomedical technologies and lithium
specialty products, all of which enjoy solid customer bases and consistent,
growing demand. The majority of Specialty Chemicals sales are to customers in
non-cyclical end markets.
BioPolymer is organized around the food, pharmaceutical and medical device
markets, and is a key supplier to many companies in these markets. Many of BioPolymer’s
customers in the food and pharmaceutical markets have come to rely on us for
the majority of their supply requirements for these product lines. We believe
that such reliance is based on our innovative solutions and operational quality.
The Health Care Ventures business of BioPolymer is leveraging this competency
in innovation by developing new technologies for the pharmaceutical and medical
device markets.
BioPolymer is a supplier of microcrystalline cellulose (MCC), carrageenan and
alginates—ingredients that have high value-added applications in the production
of food, pharmaceutical and other specialty consumer and industrial products.
MCC, processed from specialty grades of both hardwood pulp and softwood pulp,
provides binding and disintegrant properties for dry tablets and capsules and
has unique functionality that improves the texture and stability of many food
products. Carrageenan and alginates, both processed from seaweed, are used in
a wide variety of food, pharmaceutical, nutraceutical and biomedical applications.
In our Health Care Ventures business we are developing technology platforms
within two major segments: Biomedical, which develops and provides ultrapure
biopolymers and applications know-how for biomedical devices; and Biopharmaceutical,
which provides alginate and carrageenan-based encapsulant technologies for pharmaceutical
and nutraceutical uses.
Lithium is a vertically-integrated technology business, based on both inorganic
and organic lithium chemistries. While lithium is sold into a variety of end-markets,
we have focused our efforts on selected growth niches such as fine chemicals
for pharmaceutical synthesis, specialty polymers and energy storage.
Organolithium products are sold to fine chemical and pharmaceutical customers
who use lithium’s unique chemical properties to synthesize high value-added
products. Organolithiums are also highly valued in the specialty polymer markets
as initiators in the production of synthetic rubbers and elastomers.
The electrochemical properties of lithium make it an ideal material for portable
energy storage in high performance applications, including heart pacemakers,
cell phones, camcorders, personal computers and next-generation technologies
that combine cellular and wireless capabilities into a single device. Lithium
is also being developed as the enabling element in advanced batteries for use
in hybrid electric, plug-in hybrids and all-electric vehicles.