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Click here for details on Biochemicals by Fermentation  |
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High Technology Sigma-Aldrich is a major supplier for High Technology chemical applications. Our sales in this sector are $300 million. We supply the world's widest range of very pure organic and inorganic chemicals and a wide variety of analytical reagents and products on both a small and large scale. These products are used in research and industry, spanning the entire $1.5 trillion worldwide Chemical and Allied products industries. Research A wide range of basic, applied and development research and testing is carried out using products supplied mainly by our Scientific Research division with sales of $250 million. We serve such diverse areas as organic, inorganic, macromolecular, physical, analytical and applied chemistry. Our Aldrich, Fluka, Riedel-de Haën and Supelco brands are found in laboratories worldwide. With these brands, we are clearly the dominant supplier of specialty research organic chemicals. The quality of these products sets the standard for the industry! And we continue to add new products aggressively, further widening the gap with our competition.
Aldrich also supplies the highest purity inorganic chemicals. Using proprietary technology, we routinely produce products 99.999% pure, such as anhydrous metal halides. And, we even supply products that are greater than 99.9999%, which approaches the limit of ascertainable purity. Such materials are extremely important in material science research, especially in the electronics industry. Combining organic molecules with certain inorganic elements results in a class of products known as organometallics. Here again, we lead the world with our in-house developed technology. In analytical applications, our Fluka and Riedel-de Haën brands comprise a complete range of laboratory essentials and specialties. Fluka is a leader in providing products for a variety of analytical applications. And, Riedel-de Haën is the recognized leader with its trademarked HYDRANAL® reagents used to determine water content in products ranging from food to oil. We continue to add new and improved innovative products. Sigma-Aldrich also supplies a wide range of standards, including those for pesticide detection, used in environmental testing. Apart from chemicals, our Supelco brand offers chromatography columns and accessories needed for environmental testing as well as applications in the petroleum, food and cosmetic industries. Obviously, it's a very wide range of research products that we supply in the area of High Technology. 
Industry
The use of our products in research and development often leads to industrial
customer requirements for larger quantities. Here our sales are almost
$50 million. Customers turn to us because of our large, unequalled range
of both manufactured and purchased products. Sigma-Aldrich's greatest advantage is vast manufacturing experience and knowledge. When a customer comes to us for a product, it is likely that we have either made it before or have made something similar. We are able to meet these demands with our excellent, large-scale, multipurpose manufacturing plants in the USA and Europe.
Our largest USA industrial organic production site is located in Sheboygan, Wisconsin (five plants on a 500-acre site) where we specialize in air-sensitive reagents and high purity organometallics. The latest plant (cost $28 million) brought on stream in 2000, operates at very low temperatures and had an extremely successful year in 2001, as we made substantial inroads into the electronics industry. Very thin deposits of our organometallic compounds (incidentally, very difficult to manufacture) are used to produce flat-screen electronic displays, anti-reflective coatings and in the manufacture of computer chips. Hydroboration chemistry (adding hydrogen to other organic materials) is also carried out at our Sheboygan facility. In this field, Aldrich is the world leader, holding patents of H.C. Brown (a Purdue University professor emeritus and 1979 Nobel Prize winner in chemistry), with whom we have a very productive ongoing collaboration. (And, we take this opportunity to wish him a very happy forthcoming 90th birthday on May 22nd, 2002.) We also provide specialized packaging for air-sensitive products. This packaging is used for product lines where maintaining the integrity of the chemicals is essential. We use a wide range of containers designed to meet customers' specific needs. Our largest production site in Europe at Fluka (Buchs, Switzerland) does a variety of very complex organic chemistry. In certain areas we're approaching capacity and to relieve the strain, we're currently in the midst of a $6 million expansion.
Our sourcing capabilities are also very highly regarded by our industrial customers. Sigma-Aldrich is a supplier to nearly every area of the Chemical and Allied products industry. And, the applications are wide and numerous. We're a major provider of specialty custom dyes (complex organic chemicals) and blends for a wide variety of printing applications. Furthermore, we also supply the widest range of organic chemicals to the Flavor and Fragrances industry. Obviously quality is of extreme importance in this human use application. Another important use for our products is in the production of batteries. Here we supply electrolyte solutions (ultra high purity, complex proprietary mixtures of inorganic and organometallic compounds in organic solutions). The large-scale industrial applications of our products are clearly very diverse and involve complex chemistry. Most are in the fast-growing High Technology area. This is our clear focus as we make future investments in plants. Unrivaled scientific knowledge is the basis of our leadership in Life Science and High Technology.
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© 2002 Sigma-Aldrich Co. Sigma-Aldrich brand products are sold exclusively through Sigma-Aldrich, Inc. |
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