Ingevity’s business originated as part of the operations of its initial
parent company, Westvaco Corporation, a paper and packaging company, using co-products
of the kraft pulping process, primarily crude tall oil ("CTO") and
lignin, as well as hardwood sawdust. Ingevity operated as a division of Westvaco
Corporation and its corporate successors, including MeadWestvaco Corporation
and WestRock Company, since 1964. Ingevity separated from WestRock Company on
May 15, 2016.
Ingevity Corporation was incorporated in Delaware on March 27, 2015. The address
of Ingevity’s principal executive offices is 5255 Virginia Avenue, North
Charleston, South Carolina 29406. Ingevity maintains a website at www.ingevity.com.
Ingevity’s website and the information contained in or connected to the
website will not be deemed to be incorporated in this document, and you should
not rely on any such information in making an investment decision.
Ingevity is a leading global manufacturer of specialty chemicals and high performance
activated carbon materials. We provide innovative solutions to meet our customers’
unique and demanding requirements through proprietary formulated products. Our
deep technical expertise and experience, flexible manufacturing, distinctive
chemistry, global reach and focus on innovation and application development
provide our customers with the ability to enhance their own products and competitive
position in the markets they serve.
Ingevity’s specialty chemical products serve as critical inputs used in
a variety of high performance applications, including asphalt paving, oil exploration
and production, agrochemicals, adhesives, lubricants and printing inks. We are
also the leading global manufacturer of activated carbon used in gasoline vapor
emission control systems in cars, trucks, motorcycles and boats, with over 750
million units installed globally, having supplied products in this application
for over 30 years. Our products meet highly specialized, complex customer needs
in the industries in which they are used. As customer applications become more
demanding, Ingevity’s products become increasingly specialized and represent
a critical component of our customers’ products, typically at a modest
input cost relative to the customer’s overall product cost. This value
creation - significant performance impact versus relatively low input cost -
provides some measure of stability as customers may be reluctant to face the
performance risk potentially associated with switching over to competitors’
offerings.
With a history of innovation spanning 100 years, we have grown into a global
leader in the markets we serve with over $900 million in sales in 2016, serving
customers in approximately 65 countries from our United States and China manufacturing
facilities. Our global engineering, technical, sales and application support
teams closely collaborate with our customers, and, importantly, with their customers.
With our deep technical expertise and experience in our customers’ applications
and end markets, we have the capacity and flexibility to anticipate and respond
to changing market conditions and customer demands and to develop proactive
solutions that provide our customers - and therefore us - with a distinct competitive
advantage. Additionally, the quality and diversity of our product portfolio,
and the flexibility of our manufacturing assets, gives us the capability to
direct our resources towards their most profitable and attractive uses and geographies
in response to changing market conditions.
We participate in attractive, higher growth sectors of the global specialty
chemicals industry. The broadly defined specialty chemicals industry is expected
to experience a 3.5% compound annual growth rate ("CAGR") from 2015
through 2020, according to IHS, Inc., a leading provider and analyst of industry
information for, among other things, the chemical industry. Ingevity focuses
on targeted markets within that space that are expected to outpace the broader
specialty chemicals market growth rate, supported by long-term secular growth
trends in infrastructure preservation and development, innovation in unconventional
oil exploration and production and increasing global food production demands.
We also participate in more commoditized sectors, where we sell our functional
chemistries, including tall oil fatty acid ("TOFA") and biofractions,
directly into the marketplace with low differentiation, and where we sell certain
activated carbons for use in some purification processes. Additionally, our
specialized automotive carbon business, which engineers, manufactures and sells
wood-based activated carbon used in gasoline vapor emission control systems,
is expected to benefit from increasingly stringent vehicle emission standards
worldwide that our products are uniquely designed and qualified to meet. The
annual global sales of light duty vehicles (i.e. passenger and light commercial
vehicles) that are powered with gasoline are forecast to grow from approximately
71 million to approximately 90 million vehicles (+28%) from 2015 to 2025. All
of this growth is expected to occur outside of the United States and Canada
in countries and regions where gasoline vapor emission standards significantly
lag the modern, highly effective standards of the United States and Canada.
This provides significant upside potential in addition to the already favorable
macroeconomic growth trends of the global automotive industry.
11.1% 
60.23 %