EU sold production of chemicals hit a decade high in 2022

The EU’s total sold production of chemicals reached €872 billion in 2022, €335 billion more than in 2011 and the highest value since that year. Total sold production of chemicals has been increasing steadily since 2011, however, from 2020 to 2021, the value of sold production jumped from €626 billion to €765 billion. 

Between 2011 and 2022, the annual average growth of the sold production of chemicals was 4.5%. 

Compared with 2021, the sold production of chemicals grew in all groups, both in absolute and relative terms. The largest increase was for inorganic chemicals (inorganic chemical elements, oxides and halogen salts; peroxysalts of inorganic acids and metals, and radioactive and associated materials), which increased from €38 billion in 2021 to €61 billion in 2022, equivalent to an increase of 61.5%. This group of products was followed by fertilisers (+50.5%; +€10 billion), essential oils, resinoids, and perfume materials (+16.2%; +€10 billion), plastic in primary forms (+13.0%; +€13 billion) and in non-primary forms (+11.2%; +€8 billion) and dyeing, tanning and colouring materials (+11.1%; +€4 billion) all with relative increases above 10%. 

Source dataset: DS-056120 (unaggregated data);    sold production of chemicals (by product group)