Albemarle Corp. ALB

Albemarle Corporation, incorporated on November 24, 1993, is a global developer, manufacturer and marketer of highly-engineered specialty chemicals. The Company operates through three segments: Lithium and Advanced Materials, Bromine Specialties and Refining Solutions. Lithium and Advanced Materials segment consists of two product categories: Lithium and Performance Catalyst Solutions. The bromine and bromine-based business includes products used in fire safety solutions and other specialty chemicals applications. The Company serves various end markets, including petroleum refining, consumer electronics, energy storage, construction, automotive, lubricants, pharmaceuticals, crop protection, food safety and custom chemistry services.

Lithium and Advanced Materials

The Lithium business is a producer of diverse product portfolios of lithium derivatives in the industry. It develops and manufactures a range of basic lithium compounds, including lithium carbonate, lithium hydroxide, lithium chloride, and value-added lithium specialties and reagents, including butyllithium and lithium aluminum hydride. Lithium is used in a variety of applications and industries, which include lithium batteries used in consumer electronics and automobiles, high performance greases, thermoplastic elastomers for car tires, rubber soles and plastic bottles, catalysts for chemical reactions, organic synthesis processes in the areas of steroid chemistry and vitamins, various life science applications, as well as intermediates in the pharmaceutical industry, among other applications. It also develops and manufactures cesium products for the chemical and pharmaceutical industries, and zirconium, barium and titanium products for various pyrotechnical applications, including airbag igniters. It also provides technical services, including the handling and use of reactive lithium products. It also offers its customers recycling services for lithium-containing by-products resulting from synthesis with organolithium products, lithium metal and other reagents.

The Company has four product lines in its Performance Catalyst Solutions (PCS) division: polymer catalysts, curatives, organometallics and electronic materials. It manufactures organometallic co-catalysts (aluminum, magnesium and zinc alkyls), as well as metallocene components and co-catalysts (methylaluminumoxane, organoborons, metallocene compounds, and finished polymerization catalysts comprising these products). It also offers finished single-site catalysts with or without its ActivCat activation technology and a line of Ziegler-Natta catalysts under the Advantage brand. Its co-catalysts and finished catalysts are used in customers' production of polyolefin polymers. Such polymers are commodity like Ziegler-Natta polymerization technology-based and specialty like, Single Site polymerization technology-based plastics serving a variety of end markets, including packaging, non-packaging, films and injection molding. Its organometallic products are also used in the manufacture of alpha-olefins like, hexene, octene, decene. In electronic materials, it manufactures and sells metal organic products into electronic applications, such as the production of light-emitting diodes (LEDs) for displays and general lighting, as well as other products used in the production of solar cells. Its curatives include a range of curing agents used in polyurethanes, epoxies and other engineered resins.

Bromine Specialties Segment

The bromine and bromine-based business includes products used in fire safety solutions and other specialty chemicals applications. Its fire safety technology enables the use of plastics in performance, high heat applications by enhancing the flame resistant properties of these materials. The end market products that benefit from its fire safety technology include plastic enclosures for consumer electronics, printed circuit boards, wire and cable products, electrical connectors, textiles and foam insulation. The bromine-based business also includes specialty chemicals products, such as elemental bromine, alkyl bromides, inorganic bromides, brominated powdered activated carbon and a number of bromine fine chemicals. These specialty products are used in chemical synthesis, oil and gas well drilling and completion fluids, mercury control, water purification, beef and poultry processing and various other industrial applications. Other specialty chemicals that it produces include tertiary amines for surfactants, biocides, and disinfectants and sanitizers.

Refining Solutions Segment

The Refining Solutions Segment has two product lines: Clean Fuels Technologies, which comprises hydroprocessing catalysts (HPC), and Heavy Oil Upgrading (HOU), which comprises fluidized catalytic cracking (FCC) catalysts and additives. HPC products are applied throughout the refining industry. Their application enables the upgrading of oil fractions to clean fuels and other usable oil feedstocks and products by removing sulfur, nitrogen and other impurities from the feedstock. In addition, they improve product properties by adding hydrogen and in some cases improve the performance of downstream catalysts and processes. FCC catalysts assist in the cracking of less desired refinery petroleum streams into derivative and products, such as transportation fuels and petrochemical feedstocks like propylene. Its FCC additives are used to reduce emissions of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide in FCC units and to increase liquefied petroleum gas olefins yield, such as propylene, and to boost octane in gasoline. Its refinery catalysts are used to crack and treat all feedstocks while meeting refinery yield and product needs.

The Company competes with FMC Corporation, Sociedad Quimica y Minera de Chile S.A., SichuanTianqi Lithium, Jiangxi Ganfeng Lithium, Cabot Corporation, Sigma-Aldrich Corporation, AkzoNobel, Chemtura Corporation, Lonza, W.R. Grace & Co., Israel Chemicals Ltd, Criterion Catalysts and Technologies, Advanced Refining Technologies, Haldor Topsoe, BASF Corporation and China Petrochemical Corporation (Sinopec).