Selling to chemicals and materials companies

Chemicals and materials companies live by the cycle. When the cycle turns down, they cut. When it turns up, they invest. And when they reshape the portfolio, they buy a lot of help.

If you sell services into this industry, learn to read where each company sits in that cycle. It tells you what they'll buy and when.

Who buys

The buying seats are a little different from other manufacturers. A business unit president often holds real budget, since many chemicals companies run as a set of semi-independent businesses. The COO or head of manufacturing owns plants, and plants are where most of the cost sits. The CIO owns the ERP, the plant systems and the data between them. And the CFO owns every cost program and every portfolio decision.

Look for a head of supply chain or procurement too. Raw materials are a huge share of cost, and the people who manage them have a lot of influence.

The technical lead is often a manufacturing IT or process control manager. They know which plants run on which systems and why nothing talks to anything else.

The pressures they face

Cycles drive everything. In a downturn, volumes fall, prices fall and companies launch cost programs. In an upturn, they push throughput and invest in capacity. Either way, there's work, but it's different work.

Portfolio moves are constant. Chemicals companies buy, sell and spin off businesses more than almost any other industry. Every divestiture leaves a business that needs its own systems. Every acquisition leaves two of everything. That's integration and separation work, and it's some of the most reliable services work there is.

Plants are old and complex. Many sites run decades-old control systems, and connecting them to modern planning and ERP platforms is slow and risky. Safety and environmental rules add to the complexity, and they keep tightening.

And sustainability pressure is real. Customers and regulators want emissions data, product carbon footprints and supply chain traceability. Most companies are building that capability now, often by hand.

Signals that matter most here

Portfolio moves come first. A divestiture announcement, a spin-off or an acquisition creates a predictable stream of work, and the separation or integration has a deadline written into the deal.

Business pressure is close behind. Cost program language in a 10-K or an earnings release, restructuring charges or plant closures tell you a company is in a cutting phase. I covered how to read that in margin pressure is a buying signal.

New leaders matter, especially a new business unit president or COO. They'll review the plant network and the cost base in the first 90 days.

Hiring tells you which programs are funded. Posts for MES engineers, process data analysts or sustainability reporting leads point at specific projects.

An example opener

Say a mid-size specialty chemicals company announces it's divesting one of its business units, with the sale expected to close in about nine months. The 8-K mentions a transition services agreement.

Saw the announcement that the coatings business is being sold, with a transition services agreement in place. The finance and IT teams now own a hard deadline to stand up separate systems before that agreement runs out. My guess is the ERP and plant data are more tangled together than the deal timeline assumed. Is that accurate, or is the bigger issue something else?

It's built on a real filing, a real deadline and a real problem. And if the buyer says the systems are already clean, they'll probably tell you what isn't.

For this deal, you'd write a different version to the CFO, the CIO and the business unit leader being sold.

What to avoid

Don't treat chemicals like generic manufacturing. The cycle, the portfolio moves and the safety stakes change the conversation. If you sell into both, see selling to manufacturers for the overlap.

Don't pitch innovation to a company in a cost program. Read the cycle first.

Don't underestimate the technical lead. In this industry, process control and plant IT people can stop a project cold if they think it's unsafe. Bring them in early.

And don't ignore the deal calendar. Integration and separation work runs on dates that are set by lawyers and bankers. If you show up after the plan is written, you're bidding on someone else's scope.

Read the cycle, follow the portfolio and write to the deadline. That's how you sell into chemicals and materials.