New Business Groups

Platforms for Growth

Rohm and Haas entered 1998 with a corporate structure designed for excellent customer focus and profitable growth. During the year, the company reorganized its portfolio into three business groups in order to greatly improve its operational excellence. The resulting new organization maintains an outstanding customer orientation while reflecting each group's areas of technological expertise, as well as the nature of its operations and strategies.

Performance Polymers includes all aspects of the company's acrylic technologies. These begin with the Monomers business, which produces acrylic feedstocks from commodity petrochemicals. Monomers supplies a variety of these materials to each of the other five Performance Polymers businesses: Coatings, Specialty Polymers, Plastics Additives, Build- ing Products and Formulation Chemicals. Each of these businesses applies elements of Rohm and Haas's proprietary acrylic expertise in the design of specialty products used by customers to deliver hundreds of end uses, from paint to laundry detergent to hair spray, and much more. Because the Performance Polymers businesses exploit a common technological platform, this group is designed to be fully integrated in both its operations and its market strategies.

Electronic Materials comprises all aspects of Rohm and Haas's participation in the electronics industry. This group includes Shipley Company, which produces photoresists and ancillaries required for the manufacture of semiconductors. Shipley's newly formed Shipley Ronal division is the result of the company's acquisition of LeaRonal, which was completed in January 1999 (see page 14). Shipley Ronal offers customers a full line of chemical products for the production of printed wiring boards. Rohm and Haas also owns a 48% interest in Rodel, Inc., which produces slurries and pads used in chemical-mechanical planarization, also an enabling technology used by the electronics industry. Shipley and Rodel maintain separate operations, yet they pursue coordinated strategies in serving their common customer base.

Chemical Specialties encompasses several businesses that share a specialty focus on small-molecule chemistry. Agricultural Chemicals produces traditional fungicides and herbicides, as well as newer, bioengineered pesticides. Ion Exchange Resins manufactures a number of specialty products used by the pharmaceutical industry, as well as in water treatment and food processing, to alter the properties of water and other fluids. Biocides supplies targeted applications of isothiazolone chemistry, which controls algae, fungi and bacteria in a wide variety of end uses, from paints to personal-care products. Primenes produces specialty amines used in a variety of industrial applications, including lubricants, oilfield chemicals, dyes, plastics and metal working. TosoHaas, a joint venture with Tosoh Corp. of Japan, produces media and preparative columns for a range of separations for such end uses as pharmaceutical manufacturing, environmental testing and biomedical research.

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