Innovation, sustainability and customer service are at the heart of our business model, which draws on our unique teams and assets to deliver high-performance speciality chemical products and create value for all our stakeholders.

Global demand for lower-carbon, more circular products for construction and urbanisation, health and hygiene products, adhesives and packaging, shapes our strategy, which is to drive long-term sustainable growth.

There are five key priorities to our strategy:

  • Organic growth in attractive end markets
  • Rigorous and consistent portfolio management to build focused, leading positions
  • Operational and commercial excellence in how we run our business
  • Differentiated steering in how we allocate capital and talent
  • Diversity, equity, and inclusion and holistic people development.

Three divisions across diverse global markets

Across our three divisions – Coatings & Construction Solutions, Adhesive Solutions, Health & Protection and Performance Materials – we have over 6,000 customers in markets that include:

  • Health and protection
  • Hygiene
  • Carpet, compounds and foam
  • Paper and packaging
  • Coatings
  • Construction
  • Technical textiles
  • Adhesives
  • Tapes and labels
  • Tyre additives
  • Oil and gas
  • Polymer additives
  • Acrylate monomers.

We have strong relationships with customers in these highly differentiated markets, supported by global technical services teams.

Our purpose

Our purpose is to create innovative and sustainable solutions for the benefit of customers and society.

We are global leaders in sustainable polymer solutions, and to support this we have established our ESG roadmap, Vision 2030, based on our values of safety, health and environment, accountability, integrity, teamwork and innovation.

Our key product lines

We have a highly differentiated portfolio with multiple product lines. Through our constant innovation, our products are further improving, as are the margins.

Our current key products include:

  • Water-based nitrile butadiene latex and performance materials products for the healthcare, carpet, foam and paper markets.
  • Acrylic and vinylic water-based dispersions for the coatings, construction, technical textiles, adhesives and oil and gas markets.
  • Tackifying resins and additives for adhesive products.
  • Speciality chemical additives and non-water-based chemistry for a broad range of applications from polymer additives and polymer manufacture to emerging materials.
  • Acrylate monomers that improve the performance characteristics of polymer formulations including latex and solution copolymers and cross-linkable polymer systems.

Adding value for customers

We are responding to consumer needs in thousands of applications with customer-specific formulations, built on close technical services partnerships with customers to advise on applications and end-use. Our outstanding global innovation across divisions focuses on product sustainability benefits.

Creating value for all stakeholders

Here are some of our key statistics from the 2022 financial year

£265m

Total Group EBITDA

5,200

Employees in 24 countries

£266m

Wages and salaries

£34m

R&D spend

50%

Of new products with sustainability benefits

£1.9bn

Spend with suppliers

£66m

Corporate tax paid

£100m

Dividends to shareholders