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Brenntag Essentials, which markets a broad portfolio of process chemicals across a wide range of industries, achieved an operating gross profit of €2.07bn, up by 16 per cent, almost entirely driven by organic growth. “In a challenging environment, Brenntag managed to maintain deliveries to customers throughout the year,” the company says. Brenntag Specialties, the largest specialty chemicals distributor in the world, grew operating gross profit by 25.4 per cent to €1.28bn, with a particularly strong growth contribution from the Americas and EMEA. There was a mixture of organic growth and contributions from recent acquisitions.
BRENNTAG HAS REPORTED 2021 sales of €14.4bn, with operating gross profit up almost 20 per cent at €3.38bn; operating EBITDA was almost 30 per cent higher at €1.35bn, while profit after tax was stable at €461m, reflecting
progress in achieving additional operating EBITDA of €220m annually by the end of 2023. It has so far completed 72 of the 100 planned site closures and reduced its headcount by 925 jobs.
WORD FROM THE BOSS “Brenntag’s business model again proved its resilience in particularly difficult times of severe pressure on global supply chains,” says Dr Christian Kohlpaintner, CEO. “We expect the overall macro-economic, geopolitical, and the associated operational conditions to remain challenging. Supply chains have been and still are under severe pressure, further impacting production and supply. We only expect some normalisation of market conditions later in the year.” In light of current economic conditions, Brenntag Group expects operating EBITDA for 2022 to be between €1.45bn and €1.55bn. This forecast is based on a normalising market environment later in the year, includes the potential efficiency improvement driven by the measures of Project Brenntag as well as the contributions to earnings from acquisitions already closed and assumes that exchange rates will remain stable. The global economy is expected to continue to be severely impacted by exceptional influencing factors that cannot be reliably forecast, such as the Covid-19 pandemic, current geopolitical developments, pressure on global supply chains, inflationary tendencies and price volatility.
extraordinary expenses relating mainly to excise tax payments and provisions. The implementation of Project Brenntag, the company’s comprehensive transformation journey, started at the beginning of 2021. Brenntag says the transformation is ahead of plan and continues to make very good
One element of Project Brenntag was the restructuring of the company into two distinct divisions: Brenntag Essentials and Brenntag Specialties. Both contributed strongly to the 2021 results, with operating EBITDA growth of 34.3 per cent for Brenntag Specialties and 28.6 per cent for Brenntag Essentials.
BUY TO BUILD Brenntag invested some €440m in merger and acquisition activity during 2021, acquiring six companies; this was its highest investment since 2015. Some 80 per cent of the M&A spend was related to what Brenntag describes
GOING TO PLAN RESULTS • STRATEGIC REORGANISATION AND A CONTINUING FOCUS ON ACQUISITIONS HAVE PROPELLED BRENNTAG TO ITS HIGHEST EVER SALES LAST YEAR, WITH MORE TO COME IN 2022
HCB MONTHLY | APRIL 2022
