BASF Remains On Top, Sinopec Surges To The Lead! This Chinese Company Sees The Biggest Growth

Recently, the American magazine Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN) released the "Top 50 Global Chemical Companies in 2025." BASF remains the world's largest chemical manufacturer, Sinopec continues to hold the second place in Asia, and Dow remains in third place.

BASF ranks first, with chemical sales of approximately $70.6 billion in 2024; Sinopec's chemical sales are about $58.1 billion, and Dow's sales are around $42.9 billion.

In terms of Chinese companies, apart from Sinopec and PetroChina, Formosa Plastics ranks 11th with a sales revenue of $30.3 billion; Syngenta and Rongsheng Petrochemical follow closely, ranking 13th and 14th with $26.9 billion and $26.4 billion respectively; Wanhua Chemical ranks 15th with $25.3 billion; Hengli Petrochemical occupies the 18th position with $21.3 billion; Oriental Shenghong is 23rd with $15.3 billion; Tongkun Group's sales revenue of $13.7 billion has risen 7 places to 30th; Hengyi Petrochemical ranks 35th with $11.8 billion; and Xinfengming Group, with $9.3 billion, has risen 4 places to 44th.

Among the world's top 50 chemical companies, 11 are from China, the same number as the previous year. The United States has 10, Japan has 7, Germany has 4, the United Kingdom has 3, and South Korea has 2.

The revenue threshold for this year's top 50 is $8 billion, a slight decrease of nearly $400 million compared to last year. There are 2 companies with sales exceeding $50 billion, 3 companies with sales between $40 billion and $50 billion, 6 companies between $30 billion and $40 billion, 7 companies between $20 billion and $30 billion, and 22 companies between $10 billion and $20 billion.

Overall Situation

In 2024, the global chemical industry continued the downward trend seen in 2023, but the decline significantly narrowed, and regional differentiation accelerated. Leading companies showed initial signs of stabilizing profitability. The total chemical revenue of the top 50 global chemical companies reached 7,553.21 billion yuan (RMB), a year-on-year decrease of 1.0%, narrowing by 4.9 percentage points compared to 2023.

Specifically, Sinopec topped the list of the top 50 global chemical leading companies in 2024 with a chemical business revenue of 523.86 billion yuan. Germany's BASF followed closely in second place with 504.12 billion yuan, and the United States' Dow surpassed ExxonMobil to rank third with 305.98 billion yuan.

China Petrochemical Corporation (Sinopec) showed a recovery growth trend, with chemical business revenue turning from a decline to an increase, growing by 1.7% year-on-year. In contrast, Germany's BASF's chemical business revenue decreased by 4.3% year-on-year, and the United States' Dow Chemical's revenue decreased by 2.7% year-on-year. Affected by the continued decline in fertilizer prices from the 2022 high, fertilizer producers such as Norway's Yara and the United States' Mosaic saw their performance continue to plummet significantly in 2023, building on already steep declines. Although the rate of decline has narrowed, Mosaic still experienced the largest year-on-year decline in chemical business revenue among the top 50 companies, reaching 17.9%, which also caused its ranking to drop significantly by 11 places.