Construction Chemical Sales

An extensive search of the Internet was made to find market sales data related to chemicals used in construction.  In information found, construction chemicals are generally defined as chemicals added to construction materials to improve the performance of the materials.  Examples include: concrete and asphalt additives; adhesives and sealants; protective coatings; waterproofing materials; and repair chemicals.

The market sales data found indicate that recent year estimates of global sales values for such chemicals range from the low 20 to high 30 billion US dollar range.  At the same time, the global sales value for construction is estimated to be from 8 to 8.5 trillion US dollars.  So, this data gives an approximate construction chemical sales to construction sales ratio of from about 0.24 to 0.5% (20 billion/8.5 trillion; 40 billion/8 trillion).

US Census data indicates that in 2014, the total construction sales value in the United States was $962 billion (click here to find this amount).   (Census Bureau notes indicate that this $962 billion is the total sales value of construction work done in the US.)

Assuming that 0.25 to 0.5% as the ratio for construction chemicals (as defined above) to total construction sales is correct, this indicates that in 2014 in the US construction chemical sales ranged from about $2.4 billion (0.0025 X $962 billion) to about $4.8 billion (0.005 X $962 billion).

To test this result, I looked at annual reports for chemical companies that report separately (as a segment) construction chemical sales or has only construction chemical sales as their business.   I found such data (for 2014) for the five companies listed in this table:

company	total construction chemical sales ($ billion)	percentage of sales in US	sales value of construction chemicals in US ($ billion)
basf	2.63	0.27	0.71
dow	1.77	0.45	0.80
grace	1.09	0.33	0.36
rpm	2.99	0.62	1.85
sika	5.78	0.134	0.77
total	14.26		4.49

As seen in the table, the total US construction chemical sales of these five companies total $4.49 billion.  Other companies certainly have construction chemical sales, but do not report such sales separately in their company reports.

The $4.49 billion sales found for the five companies agrees fairly well with US sales estimates provided above.  So it seems reasonably to write that less than 1% of total construction sales include construction chemicals.