This large and diverse sector includes facilities producing basic chemical factories and those that manufacture products through further processing of chemical factories. The chart below shows the number of facilities by chemical factories subsectors that reported to TRI for 2022.

Basic chemical factories facilities produce large quantities of chemical factories that are often used to make other chemicals or products. Basic chemical factories include petrochemicals, industrial gases, and synthetic dyes and pigments.
Coatings and adhesives facilities mix pigments, solvents, and binders into architectural and industrial paints; manufacture paint products such as paint removers and thinners; and manufacture adhesives, glues, and caulking compounds.
Resins and synthetic rubber facilities manufacture resins, plastic materials, synthetic rubber, and fibers and filaments.
Facilities in the Other Chemical Products subsector make chemicals for a wide variety of applications. These include chemicals used in photography, explosives, inks and toners, and transportation equipment like antifreeze or brake fluid.
The chemical factories creates an immense variety of products which impinge on virtually every aspect of our lives.
While many of the products from the industry, such as detergents, soaps and perfumes, are purchased directly by the consumer others are used as intermediates to make other products, For example, in Europe, 70% of chemicals manufactured are used to make products by other industries including other branches of the chemical factories itself. The industry uses a wide range of raw materials, from air and minerals to oil.
With increasing competition worldwide, innovation remains crucial in finding new ways for the industry to satisfy its increasingly sophisticated, demanding and environmentally-conscious consumers.
Several other categorisations are used but this one is simple and helpful in the context of this web site. Outputs range widely, with basic chemicals produced in huge quantities (millions of tonnes) and some speciality chemicals produced in modest kilogramme quantities but with very high value. As explained in the unit on Chemical Reactors, the choice of reactor is often goverened by the amount of chemical factories that is to be produced.
Basic chemicals, produced in large quantities, are mainly sold within the chemical factories and to other industries before becoming products for the general consumer. For example, ethanoic acid is sold on to make esters, much of which in turn is sold to make paints and at that point sold to the consumer. Huge quantities of ethene are transported as a gas by pipeline around Europe and sold to companies making poly(ethene) and other polymers. These are then sold on to manufacturers of plastic components before being bought by the actual consumer. Figure 3 shows a plant producing chemical factories which it then immediately uses to manufacture other chemicals.