With 2020 in the rearview mirror, it’s clear that the leaders and laggards of safer and greener chemicals align with the winners and losers on the stock market.
When we launched chemical producer ranking tool ChemScore in June last year, we hoped that it would guide conscientious investors towards companies making a real effort in terms of safer chemicals, increased transparency and lack of controversies such as fines and liability cases, and away from chemical producers who failed to prioritize these important issues.
Since chemicals are at the beginning of the value chain of almost every business sector, chemical producers play an obvious role in investment portfolios.
The companies ranked in ChemScore are diverse; we list basic chemical producers, but also gas companies, agro-chemical companies and formulators producing end-products like paints and coatings.
“Would a high ranking on ChemScore pay off for frontrunners and the people who invested in them?”
What they all have in common is that they have peers, allowing us to compare and rank the sustainability of their chemical management. But would a high ranking on ChemScore pay off for frontrunners and the people who invested in them? We looked up the stock prices of “our” companies and got the answer in green and red.
The 3 top ranked companies – DSM, Indorama and AkzoNobel – averaged a 9.4% increase on the stockmarket last year – despite the “Corona effect”:
On the other end of the scale, the 3 bottom ranked producers – Sinopec Shanghai, Sasol and Umicore – suffered a scorching loss of 34.6% on average:
This adds up to a whopping 44% difference in stock market performance between ChemScore’s best and worst:
“That is a significant difference. And while chemical management may not be the only reason for this gap, it’s clear that sustainability is becoming an important driver on the stock market – not to mention essential for our future economic system and common well-being”, says ChemSec’s Senior Business and Investors Advisor Sonja Haider.
