Wikibooks: IB Chemistry/Chemical Industries

= Products = Polymers and plastics especially polyethylene polypropylene polyvinyl chloride polyethylene terephthalate polystyrene and polycarbonate comprise about 80% of the industry’s output worldwide.[citation needed] Chemicals are used to make a wide variety of consumer goods as well as thousands inputs to agriculture manufacturing construction and service industries. The chemical industry itself consumes 26 percent of its own output.[citation needed] Major industrial customers include rubber and plastic products textiles apparel petroleum refining pulp and paper and primary metals. Chemicals is nearly a $3 trillion global enterprise and the EU and U.S. chemical companies are the world s largest producers.[citation needed] = Product Category Breakdown = Sales of the chemical business can be divided into a few broad categories including basic chemicals (about 35 to 37 percent of the dollar output) life sciences (30 percent) specialty chemicals (20 to 25 percent) and consumer products (about 10 percent).[citation needed] Basic chemicals or commodity chemicals are a broad chemical category including polymers bulk petrochemicals and intermediates other derivatives and basic industrials inorganic chemicals and fertilizers. Typical growth rates for basic chemicals are about 0.5 to 0.7 times GDP. Product prices are generally less than fifty cents per pound. Polymers the largest revenue segment at about 33 percent of the basic chemicals dollar value includes all categories of plastics and man made fibers. The major markets for plastics are packaging followed by home construction containers appliances pipe transportation toys and games. The largest volume polymer product polyethylene (PE) is used mainly in packaging films and other markets such as milk bottles containers and pipe. Polyvinyl chloride (PVC) another large volume product is principally used to make pipe for construction markets as well as siding and to a much smaller extent transportation and packaging materials. Polypropylene (PP) similar in volume to ...