Archive:Manufacture of chemicals and chemical products statistics - NACE Rev. 2
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- Data from April 2013. Most recent data: Further Eurostat information, Main tables and Database.
This article presents an overview of statistics for chemicals and chemical products manufacturing in the European Union (EU), as covered by NACE Rev. 2 Division 20.
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(% share of sectoral total) - Source: Eurostat (sbs_na_ind_r2)
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(% share of sectoral total) - Source: Eurostat (sbs_sc_ind_r2)
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Main statistical findings
Structural profile
There were 28.6 thousand enterprises operating within the chemicals and chemical products manufacturing (Division 20) sector in the EU-27 in 2010. Employment in this sector reached 1.16 million persons, equivalent to 0.9 % of all persons employed in the non-financial business economy (Sections B to J and L to N and Division 95) and 3.9 % of the manufacturing (Section C) workforce. The chemicals and chemical products manufacturing sector generated EUR 111.0 billion of value added which was a much higher share of the non-financial business economy (1.9 %) and manufacturing (7.0 %) totals than it recorded for employment.
This relatively high share of value added resulted in an apparent labour productivity ratio for the EU-27’s chemicals and chemical products manufacturing sector of EUR 95.3 thousand per person employed in 2010, more than double the non-financial business economy average (EUR 44.8 thousand per person employed) and well above the manufacturing average (EUR 52.8 thousand per person employed). Indeed, this was the fourth highest apparent labour productivity ratio recorded for any manufacturing NACE division in 2010. Personnel costs within the EU-27’s chemicals and chemical products manufacturing sector were also relatively high, averaging EUR 52.3 thousand per employee, the third highest figure across any of the manufacturing NACE divisions in 2010. The wage-adjusted labour productivity ratio that resulted from the combination of these two indicators shows that EU-27 value added per person employed was equivalent to 182.0 % of average personnel costs per employee in 2010. The wage-adjusted labour productivity ratio for the chemicals and chemical products manufacturing sector was the fifth highest among the manufacturing NACE divisions and was considerably higher than the non-financial business economy average (144.8 %).
The gross operating rate (the relation between the gross operating surplus and turnover) stood at 10.3 % for the EU-27’s chemicals and chemical products manufacturing sector in 2010, slightly higher than the non-financial business economy average (10.1 %) and therefore also above the manufacturing average (9.0 %).
Sectoral analysis
One of the six subsectors which constitute the EU-27’s chemicals and chemical products manufacturing sector was dominant — see Figure 1 — namely, the manufacture of basic chemicals, fertilisers and nitrogen compounds, plastics and synthetic rubber in primary forms (Group 20.1, hereafter referred to as basic chemicals manufacturing). This subsector contributed 46.4 % of sectoral employment and 57.4 % of sectoral value added. According to the employment measure, the next largest subsectors were: the manufacture of soap and detergents, cleaning and polishing preparations, perfumes and toilet preparations (Group 20.4, hereafter referred to as the manufacture of cleaning products and toiletries); the manufacture of other chemical products (Group 20.5); and the manufacture of paints, varnishes and similar coatings, printing ink and mastics (Group 20.3, hereafter referred to as paint and ink manufacturing). These four activities collectively made up 95 % or more of the EU-27’s chemicals and chemical products manufacturing sector’s enterprise population, employment and value added in 2010. The chemicals and chemical products manufacturing sector was completed by the manufacture of pesticides and other agrochemical products (Group 20.2) and the manufacture of man-made fibres (Group 20.6).
Despite their relatively different sizes, the six subsectors within the EU-27’s chemicals and chemical products manufacturing sector recorded relatively similar values for a range of expenditure, productivity and profitability indicators, as shown in Table 2b. In 2010 (2009 data for some activities and some indicators), all six subsectors recorded values above the manufacturing and non-financial business economy averages for apparent labour productivity, average personnel costs and wage-adjusted labour productivity ratios.
The highest apparent labour productivity for one of the EU-27’s chemicals and chemical products manufacturing subsectors in 2010 was recorded for basic chemicals manufacturing, with EUR 118.2 thousand of value added per person employed. The lowest values were recorded for the manufacture of cleaning products and toiletries (EUR 66.5 thousand per person employed), as well as the manufacture of man-made fibres (EUR 63.4 thousand per person employed, 2009 data). EU-27 personnel costs per employee also peaked for the basic chemicals manufacturing subsector, at EUR 60.1 thousand per employee, with the lowest average recorded for the manufacture of cleaning products and toiletries (EUR 40.4 thousand per employee). In general, the ranking of the six subsectors for the EU-27 was the same whether based on apparent labour productivity or average personnel costs, with the exception of relatively high average personnel costs for the manufacture of man-made fibres and relatively low average personnel costs for the manufacture of pesticides and other agrochemical products. The resulting wage-adjusted labour productivity ratios for the six subsectors ranged from 152.6 % to 196.6 %, with the ratio for man-made fibres manufacturing (143.7 %) pulled below this range by its higher average personnel costs.
The gross operating rate for the six chemicals and chemical products manufacturing subsectors in the EU-27 was within a relatively narrow range. The lowest rate in 2010 was recorded for paint and ink manufacturing (9.7 %), and this was the only subsector where the rate was below the non-financial business economy average (10.1 %). However, the remaining five subsectors each recorded gross operating rates that were situated between the non-financial business economy average and a high of 11.6 %, which was recorded for the manufacture of pesticides and other agrochemical products.
Country analysis
In value added terms, the largest Member State within the EU-27’s chemicals and chemical products manufacturing sector in 2010 was Germany, followed at some distance by France and the United Kingdom. These three Member States collectively contributed 57.4 % of the EU-27’s value added in this sector, higher than their corresponding share of manufacturing value added (51.4 %). While Germany (324.4 thousand) and France (157.5 thousand) had the two largest workforces, that in Italy (113.5 thousand) was larger than that in the United Kingdom (110.8 thousand). These four Member States provided 60.9 % of the EU-27’s workforce within the chemicals and chemical products manufacturing sector, again above their corresponding share of the EU-27’s manufacturing workforce (55.2 %).
The relative importance of the chemicals and chemical products manufacturing sector was highest in Belgium where it accounted for 3.6 % of non-financial business economy value added, ahead of Lithuania (3.1 %), Germany (2.8 %) and the Netherlands (2.7 %): for Belgium this was the second highest contribution in 2010 to the EU-27 total among all of the NACE divisions within the non-financial business economy. The least specialised Member States, in value added terms, were Cyprus, Slovakia, Ireland, Latvia and Portugal, where this sector contributed less than 1.0 % of non-financial business economy value added, as it also did in Croatia and Norway.
Belgium’s high specialisation in chemicals and chemical products manufacturing was broadly based. Belgium was the most specialised EU Member State in 2010 (in value added terms) for the manufacture of other chemical products manufacturing, second most specialised for two other subsectors and third most specialised for a further two subsectors. By contrast, Estonia, Poland and Austria were each the most specialised Member State in one of the subsectors (see Table 3), despite being relatively unspecialised in chemicals and chemical products manufacturing as a whole.
The high wage-adjusted labour productivity ratio for chemicals and chemical products manufacturing that was observed for the EU-27 in 2010 was repeated across nearly all of the EU Member States: among those with data available, only Ireland, Romania and Slovakia recorded wage-adjusted labour productivity ratios for the chemicals and chemical products manufacturing sector that were below their respective averages for the non-financial business economy. The highest wage-adjusted labour productivity ratio for the chemicals and chemical products manufacturing sector was recorded for Lithuania, where apparent labour productivity was 4.2 times (417.7 %) as high as average personnel costs per employee; this was the second highest wage-adjusted labour productivity ratio recorded by Lithuania among all of the non-financial business economy NACE divisions in 2010. The wage-adjusted labour productivity ratio for Latvia was over 300 %, while for Poland and the Netherlands this ratio was over 250 %.
The highest gross operating rates for chemicals and chemical products manufacturing in 2010 were reported for Latvia, Denmark, Greece (2009 data) and the United Kingdom, all over 15.0 %. In most of the other Member States this measure of operating profitability ranged from 7.8 % to 14.7 %; Slovakia and France recorded gross operating rates below this range, as did Croatia.
Size class analysis
Large enterprises (employing 250 or more persons) contributed 65.1 % of the EU-27’s chemicals and chemical products manufacturing value added, which was above the non-financial business economy (42.3 %) and manufacturing (55.5 %) averages. In a similar vein, large enterprises employed 56.0 % of the chemicals and chemical products manufacturing workforce, even further above the corresponding shares of large enterprises in the non-financial business economy (32.5 %) and manufacturing (40.0 %) workforces. The contribution of micro enterprises (employing fewer than 10 persons) was particularly low within the chemicals and chemical products manufacturing sector, generating 2.4 % of sectoral value added and employing 4.7 % of the workforce; these values were around one third of the manufacturing averages (7.1 % and 14.3 % respectively).
In a majority (16) of EU Member States, large enterprises provided more than half of the value added that was generated in the chemicals and chemical products manufacturing sector in 2010, with their share exceeding three quarters in Romania (76.8 %) and Germany (79.8 %). The value added contribution of large enterprises was below one third in four of the Member States — Ireland, Greece (2009 data), Portugal and Cyprus — with the latter having no large enterprises in this activity.
Data sources and availability
The analysis presented in this article is based on the main dataset for structural business statistics (SBS) and size class data, all of which are published annually.
The main series provides information for each EU Member State as well as a number of non-member countries at a detailed level according to the activity classification NACE. Data are available for a wide range of variables.
In structural business statistics, size classes are generally defined by the number of persons employed. A limited set of the standard structural business statistics variables (for example, the number of enterprises, turnover, persons employed and value added) are analysed by size class, mostly down to the three-digit (group) level of NACE. The main size classes used in this article for presenting the results are:
- small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs): with 1 to 249 persons employed, further divided into;
- micro enterprises: with less than 10 persons employed;
- small enterprises: with 10 to 49 persons employed;
- medium-sized enterprises: with 50 to 249 persons employed;
- large enterprises: with 250 or more persons employed.
Context
This article presents an overview of statistics for the chemicals and chemical products manufacturing sector in the EU, as covered by NACE Rev. 2 Division 20. This division includes the transformation of organic and inorganic raw materials by a chemical process and the formation of products.
The manufacture of basic chemicals includes the manufacture of industrial gases, dyes, pigments, other inorganic basic chemicals (including inorganic acids), other organic basic chemicals (such as acyclic and cyclic hydrocarbons, acyclic and cyclic alcohols, mono- and polycarboxylic acids, synthetic glycerol, nitrogen-function organic compounds, other organic compounds, or synthetic aromatic products).
The manufacture of other chemical products includes the manufacture of explosives and pyrotechnic products, glues, essential oils and other chemical products such as photographic chemical material and composite diagnostic preparations.
This NACE division is composed of six groups:
- the manufacture of basic chemicals, fertilisers and nitrogen compounds, plastics and synthetic rubber in primary forms (Group 20.1);
- the manufacture of pesticides and other agrochemical products (Group 20.2);
- the manufacture of paints, varnishes and similar coatings, printing ink and mastics (Group 20.3);
- the manufacture of soap and detergents, cleaning and polishing preparations, perfumes and toilet preparations (Group 20.4);
- the manufacture of other chemical products (Group 20.5);
- the manufacture of man-made fibres (Group 20.6).
See also
- Manufacturing
- Other analyses of the business economy by NACE Rev. 2 sector
- Structural business statistics introduced
Further Eurostat information
Publications
- European business - facts and figures (online publication)
- Key figures on European Business – with a special feature section on SMEs – 2011 edition
Main tables
Database
- SBS - industry and construction (sbs_ind_co)
- Annual detailed enterprise statistics - industry and construction (sbs_na_ind)
- Annual detailed enterprise statistics for industry (NACE Rev.2 B-E) (sbs_na_ind_r2)
- SMEs - Annual enterprise statistics by size class - industry and construction (sbs_sc_ind)
- Industry by size class (NACE Rev. 2 B-E) (sbs_sc_ind_r2)
- Annual detailed enterprise statistics - industry and construction (sbs_na_ind)
- SBS - regional data - all activities (sbs_r)
- SBS data by NUTS 2 regions and NACE Rev. 2 (from 2008 onwards) (sbs_r_nuts06_r2)
Dedicated section
Source data for tables and figures (MS Excel)
Other information
- Decision 1578/2007/EC of 11 December 2007 on the Community Statistical Programme 2008 to 2012
- Regulation 295/2008 of 11 March 2008 concerning structural business statistics