Cyclic Crude, Intermediate, and Gum and Wood Chemical Manufacturing (U.S., NAICS 325194)

An investor's primer. NAICS = North American Industry Classification System, the U.S. government's standard code for industries.

1. Overview

This is a small, mature corner of the U.S. chemical industry that turns two natural byproduct streams into industrial building-block chemicals. One stream is coal tar — a byproduct of the ovens that bake coal into coke for steelmaking — which is distilled into creosote, carbon pitch, naphthalene, and related aromatics. The other is pine chemistry — rosin, turpentine, and tall oil recovered from pine trees and from paper-mill pulping — refined into tackifiers, resins, and specialty acids. The same code also captures charcoal briquette making (the stuff in your grill) and older "cyclic crude and intermediate" chemistry.[1][2]

Why an investor cares: these are unglamorous but essential inputs. Rosin-based tackifiers make nearly every adhesive stick; coal-tar pitch is the binder in the carbon anodes that produce aluminum; creosote preserves the railroad crossties and utility poles that carry freight and power. Demand rides on construction, packaging, aluminum, rail, and autos, so the industry is cyclical. It is also structurally interesting right now: a "bio-based is better" tailwind lifts pine chemicals, while the raw materials for both chains are shrinking — coal tar as steelmaking modernizes, and pine tall oil as biofuel refiners bid it away.[3][4]

Ways in: there is no pure-play U.S. public stock for this niche. The relevant operations sit as segments inside larger companies — Koppers (coal tar), Ingevity (now reduced pine-chemistry exposure after a 2026 divestiture), Clorox (Kingsford charcoal) — or inside foreign-owned and private firms such as Kraton, Rain Carbon, Mainstream Pine Products, and DRT. Private investors touch it mainly through private equity, which has been an active owner and consolidator.[5][6][7]

2. What it is and how it's structured

The Census definition (2022 NAICS) covers establishments that mainly do one or more of: distilling wood or gum into products such as tall oil and wood distillates; distilling coal tar; making gum and wood chemicals such as naval stores (rosin, turpentine, pine oil, pitch), natural tanning materials, and charcoal (except activated); and making cyclic crudes and cyclic intermediates from refined petroleum or natural gas.[1][2] Think of it as two loosely related feedstock chains plus charcoal, grouped for historical reasons. (Before NAICS 2017, gum and wood chemicals and cyclic crudes/intermediates were separately classified as 325191 and 325192; their consolidation is the principal reason historical comparisons and commercial "market-size" reports are easily misread.)[8][9]

What it excludes matters a lot, because the exclusions are bigger than the industry itself:

• Aromatic petrochemicals — benzene, toluene, xylene ("BTX"), styrene, cumene — made from petroleum or natural gas are NAICS 325110 (Petrochemical Manufacturing), not here. This is the single most common confusion: most "aromatics" in the U.S. are petrochemical, not coal-tar, and fall outside 325194.[10][11]
• Aromatics recovered inside a refinery are 324110 (Petroleum Refineries); coal-tar crudes made inside a steel mill with coke ovens are 331110 (Iron and Steel Mills).[10]
• Synthetic dyes and pigments are 325132; activated carbon/charcoal is 325998; treating wood with creosote (as opposed to making the creosote) is 321114 (Wood Preservation).[10]

Operating models: Pine-chemical plants are biorefineries attached economically to softwood kraft pulp mills. Pine resins and fatty acids form soaps in the mill's black liquor; the soap is skimmed, acidulated into crude tall oil, and sold or transferred to a refinery where vacuum fractionation separates it into tall-oil fatty acids, tall-oil rosin, distilled tall oil, and pitch. Crude sulfate turpentine recovered during pulping is fractionated into terpene streams. Further reactions — esterification, dimerization, hydrogenation — turn those fractions into higher-value adhesive resins, tire chemicals, inks, coatings, lubricants, surfactants, oilfield chemicals, and fragrances.[12][13] Coal-tar distillers buy tar generated during coke production; heat and vacuum separate it into chemical oils, distillates, and carbon pitch.[5] Charcoal producers carbonize hardwood or wood-processing residues into lump charcoal or briquettes — a seasonal branded-consumer-fuel business rather than a specialty-chemical operation.[14][15]

Ownership mix: dedicated producers are few and mostly corporate — subsidiaries and business segments of larger chemical, paper, and consumer companies, increasingly foreign-owned (Korean, Indian, Swiss, Japanese, British parents) or private-equity-held. It is not a government-run field and not dominated by tiny sole proprietors; it is a genuine mid-scale industrial industry, just a small one.[5][6][7]

3. How big it is

Federal statistics (our ground truth) for NAICS 325194 in the United States:

So this is a tiny industry by headcount — about 5,500 workers across 68 plants, or roughly 82 workers and ~$81 million of shipments per plant — but each plant is a capital-intensive distillation or refining facility. (SBA = U.S. Small Business Administration; its 1,250-employee ceiling means most firms here still count as "small" for federal programs.)[17][18]

Undercount and boundary caveats. The dedicated-producer count understates the broader activity in two honest ways. First, the key feedstocks are byproducts made elsewhere: crude tall oil is skimmed at kraft pulp mills (classified in paper, NAICS 322) and coal tar comes off coke ovens at steel mills (NAICS 331110) — so the upstream supply base sits outside this code entirely. Second, some coal-tar and pine chemistry happens inside larger integrated chemical or paper companies whose plants get classified under a different primary product. Conversely, unlike some industries this one is not meaningfully undercounted by being government-run or micro-operator-driven — the federal picture of the dedicated processors is broadly right, just small.[1][17]

Concentration: 2022 Economic Census data show the top 4 firms at 57.1% of receipts, top 8 at 77.2%, top 20 at 97.5%, with a Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI, a standard concentration measure where >1,500 is "moderately concentrated") of 1,294.9 — moderately concentrated, with just 40 firms total. Those concentration figures describe a statistical bundle, not one market in which all 40 firms sell substitutable products; pine refiners, coal-tar distillers, and branded-charcoal producers generally do not compete with one another.[16][19]

For context, private market-research firms size the global pine-chemicals market at roughly $6–17 billion depending on definition, and the global crude-tall-oil-derivatives market near $2–3 billion — figures that are broader and less authoritative than the Census receipts above, and global rather than U.S.[3][4]

4. The investable universe

There is no pure-play U.S. public company. The table shows where 325194-type activity actually lives. Tickers and scale are included here (per house style, kept to this section).

Major private / other owners:

• Kraton — world's largest pine-chemicals producer (the former Arizona Chemical), taken private by South Korea's DL Chemical for ~$2.5 billion in 2022. Products serve adhesives, roads and construction, tires, coatings, lubricants, inks, oilfield chemicals, and mining.[24]
• Mainstream Pine Products — now an important private U.S. pine-chemicals operator after completing the January 2026 purchase of Ingevity's North Charleston CTO refinery and most of its Industrial Specialties line for $110 million at closing plus contingent consideration of $0–$19 million. The assets had been expected to generate approximately $130 million of 2025 revenue at a low-to-mid-single-digit EBITDA margin.[20][21]
• DRT / Pinova — French pine-chemicals firm owned by Switzerland's dsm-firmenich; its Brunswick, Georgia rosin/terpene plant (long the last big U.S. gum-rosin site) was destroyed by an April 2023 fire and permanently closed and decommissioned by end-2024, leaving the U.S. reliant on tall-oil rosin and imports.[25]
• Royal Oak Enterprises — privately held #2 U.S. charcoal maker; sources hardwood by-products from U.S. sawmills and supplies most private-label briquettes.[14][22]
• Harima Chemicals (Japan) and other specialty players in rosin resins and tall-oil derivatives.

The takeaway for a stock-picker: exposure is diluted and partial through Koppers, Ingevity, Clorox, or foreign-listed Synthomer/Rain; there is no clean listed proxy for the industry as a whole.

5. How the money works

Owners here run conversion (spread) businesses: profit is the gap between what a byproduct feedstock costs and what the refined product sells for, multiplied by volume through an expensive distillation or refining asset. The metrics that matter:

• Conversion margin per ton / gross margin. Both chains buy a low-cost byproduct (coal tar, crude tall oil, gum rosin) and sell higher-value derivatives. The spread — not the top line — is the game. Koppers' 2025 results illustrate: Carbon Materials segment sales fell from $497.8 million (2024) to $408.7 million (2025), but adjusted EBITDA rose from $36.6 million to $45.9 million and adjusted EBITDA margin increased from 7.4% to 11.2%, helped by lower raw-material and operating costs, product exits, and improved plant performance.[5]
• Feedstock cost and availability. Both feedstocks are byproducts with inelastic, and in places declining, supply. Coal-tar volume falls as steelmakers shift from coal-fed blast furnaces to scrap-fed electric-arc furnaces; crude tall oil is capped by how much pine gets pulped and is increasingly bid away by biofuel refiners (see §9). When feedstock tightens, margins compress unless product prices follow. Ingevity's pre-divestiture disclosures illustrate the sensitivity: crude tall oil represented approximately 14% of consolidated cost of sales and 38% of raw-material purchases in 2024; the company estimated that an unhedged 10% CTO price increase would have increased 2024 cost of sales by approximately $13 million.[3][4][7][26]
• Capacity utilization / throughput. These are high-fixed-cost plants; running them full spreads fixed costs and lifts margins. Idle or under-loaded distillation columns bleed money, which is why the industry has rationalized coal-tar capacity. Koppers notes that coal-tar distillation has operated with excess capacity while tar availability outside Asia has contracted.[5][7]
• Energy cost. Distillation is energy-hungry. The EIA's 2022 Manufacturing Energy Consumption Survey reported NAICS 325194 at 15,049 million Btu per employee, 25.0 thousand Btu per dollar of value added, and 11.8 thousand Btu per dollar of shipments — versus all-manufacturing averages of 1,528 million Btu, 5.6 thousand Btu, and 2.4 thousand Btu respectively. Natural-gas and power prices therefore move the cost base materially.[27]
• Product mix. Shifting from commodity intermediates toward higher-value specialty derivatives (specialty rosin esters, distilled tall oil, pavement and oilfield chemicals) is the main lever for margin and pricing power.[6][23]
• Cyclicality. Revenue tracks industrial production: adhesives (packaging, hygiene, construction), aluminum (pitch), rail and grid (creosote crossties and poles), roads and roofing, tires and rubber, and seasonal consumer grilling (charcoal). A construction or industrial downturn hits volumes and price together. The BLS producer-price index for NAICS 325194 rose to 133.9 in May 2022, fell to 109.4 by December 2025 — a decline of approximately 18% — and recovered to 123.2 by June 2026, illustrating the swing.[3][5][6][28]

In short: think byproduct-arbitrage plus utilization, cyclical, with margins squeezed between shrinking feedstock supply on one side and competitive/regulated end-markets on the other.

6. What drives demand

• Adhesives and sealants — the biggest pull. Rosin and hydrocarbon-resin tackifiers are essential in hot-melt and pressure-sensitive adhesives for packaging (e-commerce boxes), tapes, labels, hygiene products (diapers), and construction. Adhesives is the largest single end-market for pine chemicals.[3][23]
• Aluminum — coal-tar pitch binds the carbon anodes used in aluminum smelting; demand grows with electrification, lightweighting, and EVs (electric vehicles).[7]
• Rail and utilities — creosote preserves wooden railroad crossties and utility poles; demand follows rail maintenance spending and electric-grid buildout.[5]
• Roads and coatings — pine-derived resins in pavement marking, warm-mix asphalt additives, inks, and coatings; naphthalene and pitch derivatives in construction chemicals. Road additives are tied to public infrastructure budgets and weather; Ingevity reports approximately 70%–75% of its pavement-technologies revenue is generated from April through September.[3][5][21]
• Tires and rubber — rosin and carbon-black feedstock.[5]
• Fragrance, flavors, and solvents — turpentine/terpenes.[29][3]
• Consumer grilling — charcoal briquettes, seasonal and tied to consumer spending. Clorox says most grilling-product sales occur between March and September and are weather-sensitive.[22]
• Structural: "bio-based" substitution — because pine chemicals are renewable, they are winning share from petroleum-based resins in adhesives and coatings, a genuine multi-year demand tailwind. The American Chemistry Council cites an industry forecast in which global CTO availability rises from 1.85 million tonnes annually in 2019 to 2.26 million tonnes in 2030, while biochemical demand increases from 1.48 million to 1.56 million tonnes. (These are trade-group forecasts, not Census or USDA statistics.)[3][4][30]

7. Regulation

This is a chemically hazardous industry, and regulation is a live risk, especially on the coal-tar side:

• Carcinogen classification. Coal tar and coal-tar pitch are listed as known human carcinogens by the U.S. National Toxicology Program (NTP) and international bodies; they contain benzene, naphthalene, and other polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). OSHA's permissible exposure limit for coal-tar-pitch volatiles is 0.2 mg/m³ as an eight-hour time-weighted average; NIOSH treats the material as carcinogenic and recommends 0.1 mg/m³. This drives worker-exposure limits and steady regulatory pressure on the whole coal-tar chain.[31][32][33]
• Creosote is a wood-preservative pesticide regulated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under FIFRA (the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act). It is a restricted-use product now in EPA registration review, with added worker-protection measures. Notably, the European Union has moved to ban most creosote uses — a precedent that threatens the long-term crosstie/pole market if it migrates to the U.S.[34]
• Coal-tar sealcoat bans. Because coal-tar pavement sealants shed PAHs into runoff, a growing list of states and municipalities have banned them — including Washington, Minnesota, Maine, New York, Maryland, Virginia, and Washington, D.C., plus many cities.[35]
• Effluent and air rules. EPA's Gum and Wood Chemicals Manufacturing Effluent Guidelines under 40 CFR Part 454 cover charcoal and briquettes, gum rosin and turpentine, wood rosin and pine oil, tall-oil rosin, pitch and fatty acids, essential oils, and rosin derivatives. Regulated waste streams include product washing, solvent separation, equipment washing, CTO acid-treatment wash, and rosin-reactor condensate.[36] Naphthalene is a Clean Air Act hazardous air pollutant and listed carcinogen; plants are subject to EPA air-emissions rules, RCRA (Resource Conservation and Recovery Act) waste rules, and TSCA (Toxic Substances Control Act) chemical oversight. Charcoal kilns emit particulate matter, carbon monoxide, and volatile organic compounds, with afterburners and fabric filters among the applicable controls.[37] Legacy tar sites carry Superfund/cleanup liabilities.[31][35]
• Pine/naval stores are far more lightly regulated (turpentine is a flammable VOC — volatile organic compound); the old USDA Naval Stores Act grading regime is largely defunct. Individual plants still face state air and water permitting (Pinova's Georgia site had documented compliance issues before its closure).[25][29]

8. Competitive dynamics and consolidation

The defining feature is relentless consolidation of a shrinking dedicated base. Federal concentration data (2022) show the top 4 firms at 57.1% of receipts, top 8 at 77.2%, top 20 at 97.5%, with an HHI of 1,294.9 — moderately concentrated, with just 40 firms total.[16]

The M&A (mergers and acquisitions) trail tells the story:

• Pine chemicals: MeadWestvaco's pine business became Ingevity (2016 spin-off); Arizona Chemical → Kraton (2016) → DL Chemical (private, 2022); Eastman's adhesive resins → Synthomer (2022); Hercules/Ashland resins → Pinova → DRT → dsm-firmenich → closed (2024); Ingevity's CTO refinery → Mainstream Pine Products (2026).[6][20][24][23][25]
• Coal tar: Rütgers → Rain Carbon; Koppers has curtailed and rationalized North American coal-tar distillation as steel-derived tar supply tightened and is seeking customer acceptance for petroleum-blended products while investing in higher distillation yields.[7][5]

Two consequences: ownership is increasingly foreign and private-equity, and U.S. domestic capacity in some products has thinned — notably gum rosin (essentially gone after Pinova) and merchant coal-tar distillation. Barriers to entry are real: secure byproduct-feedstock relationships with pulp mills or steelmakers, capital-intensive distillation assets, environmental permits, and slow customer qualification for specialty grades.[7][25]

9. Risks

• Feedstock decline (both chains). Coal-tar supply falls as blast-furnace steel gives way to electric-arc furnaces; crude tall oil is capped by pulp output. This is the central structural risk.[3][7]
• Biofuel competition for tall oil. Renewable diesel and SAF (sustainable aviation fuel) refiners increasingly buy crude tall oil as a low-carbon feedstock, bidding it away from chemical refiners and raising costs — a real, current squeeze that has pushed tall-oil-derivative prices up and forced producers toward vertically integrated supply.[4]
• Regulation. Carcinogen classifications, the EU creosote precedent, and spreading coal-tar sealcoat bans threaten specific coal-tar end-markets; tightening air rules raise plant costs.[31][34][35]
• Substitution. Petroleum-based hydrocarbon resins compete directly with rosin tackifiers; buyers switch on price and performance. Coal-tar pitch can be partially replaced with petroleum-based material; creosote competes with other wood preservatives; charcoal competes with gas, electricity, and pellets.[3][23]
• Cyclicality. Exposure to construction, packaging, aluminum, autos, rail, and steel means volumes and prices fall together in downturns.[5][6]
• Commodity-price and trade volatility. Gum rosin prices swing hard with the Chinese harvest (China dominates global gum rosin); tariffs and import reliance add risk, especially now that U.S. gum-rosin capacity has closed.[3][25]
• Environmental liability. Legacy contamination at old tar and chemical sites (Superfund exposure) can be a material overhang for coal-tar producers.[31]
• Input risk is unusually structural. CTO supply follows pulp production and recovery decisions; coal tar follows coke production; charcoal follows regional wood-residue availability. Because plants are feedstock-specific and expensive to relocate, weak contracts or loss of a major supplier can impair an otherwise viable asset.[5][26]

10. How to invest and the outlook

Public routes (partial exposure only):

• Koppers (KOP) — the closest thing to a coal-tar play; its Carbon Materials segment was roughly a fifth of the company in 2025 ($408.7M of $1.88B); you're mostly buying rail/utility wood infrastructure.[5]
• Ingevity (NGVT) — no longer the U.S. pine-chemicals leader after selling its CTO refinery and most Industrial Specialties to Mainstream Pine Products in January 2026. Ingevity retained road technologies and lignin dispersants and receives certain refinery products from Mainstream, so it still has pine-chemistry-linked inputs but much less direct CTO-refining exposure; the company now tilts toward pavement technologies and automotive activated carbon (a different NAICS code).[6][20][21]
• Clorox (CLX) — owns Kingsford, but charcoal is a rounding error inside a household-products company.[22]
• Foreign-listed: Synthomer (LSE) for rosin/hydrocarbon resins, Rain Industries (India) for coal-tar/carbon pitch.[23][7]

Private routes: the deepest pure exposure is private — Kraton (DL Chemical), Mainstream Pine Products, DRT (dsm-firmenich), Royal Oak, Harima — reachable only via private equity, direct M&A, or as a supplier/customer. Private equity (e.g., TorQuest) has repeatedly bought and reshaped these assets, so control transactions, not public shares, are how private capital participates. Plant-level diligence should focus on feedstock-contract duration and pricing formulas, transport radius, customer qualifications, achievable yields, energy integration, maintenance backlog, environmental permits, remediation history, union contracts, working-capital seasonality, and shutdown obligations.[24][20][25]

Outlook (forward-looking judgment): this is a low-growth, cash-generative, cyclical niche, not a growth story. The bull case rests on the bio-based tailwind for pine chemicals and firm demand for aluminum-anode pitch and adhesive tackifiers; the bear case is a genuine feedstock squeeze — coal tar shrinking with old-line steel, tall oil siphoned into biofuels — plus creeping regulation on the coal-tar side. Expect continued consolidation and capacity rationalization, with the winners being those who lock up feedstock and move up the value chain into specialty derivatives. For a general investor, the practical conclusion is that 325194 is best accessed as one lever inside a diversified holding (Koppers, Ingevity) or via private/PE channels — there is no way to own the industry cleanly, and no reason to expect that to change.[3][4][6][7]

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Sources

1. U.S. Census Bureau / NAICS, "2022 NAICS Definition — 325194 Cyclic Crude, Intermediate, and Gum and Wood Chemical Manufacturing," 2022. https://www.census.gov/naics/ (mirrored at https://www.naics.com/naics-code-description/?code=325194)
2. IBISWorld, "NAICS Code 325194 — Cyclic Crude, Intermediate, and Gum and Wood Chemical Manufacturing," 2024. https://www.ibisworld.com/classifications/naics/325194/cyclic-crude-intermediate-and-gum-and-wood-chemical-manufacturing/
3. Mordor Intelligence / Fact.MR, "Pine Chemicals Market — Size, Share, Trends & Forecast," 2025. https://www.mordorintelligence.com/industry-reports/pine-chemicals-market
4. ResourceWise, "Crude Tall Oil Is Gaining Value in Low-Carbon Fuel Markets" and "How SAF Demand Is Reshaping Forest-Based Feedstock Markets," 2024–2025. https://www.resourcewise.com/blog/crude-tall-oil-is-gaining-value-in-low-carbon-fuel-markets
5. Koppers Holdings Inc., "Form 10-K, Fiscal Year 2025," U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, 2026. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1315257/000131525726000012/kop-20251231.htm
6. Ingevity Corporation, "Ingevity announces plans to explore strategic alternatives for Performance Chemicals Industrial Specialties product line and North Charleston CTO refinery; releases preliminary 2024 financial results," 2025. https://ir.ingevity.com/news-releases/news-releases-details/2025/Ingevity-announces-plans-to-explore-strategic-alternatives-for-Performance-Chemicals-Industrial-Specialties-product-line-and-North-Charleston-CTO-refinery-releases-preliminary-2024-financial-results/default.aspx
7. Rain Carbon Inc., "Coal Tar and Petroleum Distillation Products" / "Carbon Products," 2024. https://www.raincarbon.com/products-and-services/carbon-products/coal-tar-and-petroleum-distillation-products
8. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, "NAICS 2017 Revisions," 2017. https://www.bls.gov/cew/classifications/industry/naics-2017.htm
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10. U.S. Census Bureau, "2022 NAICS — 325194 cross-references and exclusions (325110, 324110, 331110, 325132, 325998, 321114, 324199)," 2022. https://www.census.gov/naics/
11. Chevron Phillips Chemical, "Benzene, Toluene, Xylene (BTX)," 2024. https://www.cpchem.com/what-we-do/solutions/olefins/products/benzene-toluene-xylene
12. U.S. Department of Agriculture, "Tall Oil Distilled — Technical Evaluation Report," 2015. https://www.ams.usda.gov/sites/default/files/media/Tall%20Oil%20distilled.pdf
13. Pine Chemicals Association, "About PCA," 2024. https://www.pinechemicals.org/about-pca
14. Royal Oak Enterprises, "About Us," 2024. https://www.royaloak.com/about/
15. Missouri Department of Natural Resources, "Water Pollution Permit — Kingsford Manufacturing," 2024. https://dnrservices.mo.gov/env/wpp/permits/issued/docs/0000931.pdf
16. U.S. Census Bureau, "2022 Economic Census — Concentration Ratios / Selected Statistics (NAICS 325194): receipts $5,490,928k; 40 firms; CR4 57.1%, CR8 77.2%, CR20 97.5%, CR50 100%; HHI 1,294.9," 2022. https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/economic-census.html
17. U.S. Census Bureau, "County Business Patterns 2023 (NAICS 325194): 68 establishments; 5,542 employees; $525.9M annual payroll," 2023. https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/cbp.html
18. U.S. Small Business Administration, "Table of Size Standards (NAICS 325194 = 1,250 employees)," 2023. https://www.sba.gov/document/support-table-size-standards
19. Iowa State University Center for Agricultural and Rural Development, "Policy Brief — Economic Census Concentration Data," 2024. https://www.card.iastate.edu/files/publications/pdf/26PB51.pdf
20. Ingevity Corporation, "Ingevity Announces Agreement to Sell North Charleston Crude Tall Oil Refinery and Majority of Industrial Specialties Product Line to Mainstream Pine Products," 2025. https://www.ingevity.com/news/press-releases/ingevity-announces-agreement-to-sell-north-charleston-crude-tall-oil-refinery-and-majority-of-industrial-specialties-product-line-to-mainstream-pine-products/
21. Ingevity Corporation, "Form 10-K, Fiscal Year 2025," U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, 2026. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1653477/000165347726000014/ngvt-20251231.htm
22. The Clorox Company, "Form 10-K, Fiscal Year 2025," U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, 2025. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/21076/000002107625000039/clx-20250630.htm
23. Eastman Chemical Company, "Eastman Completes Sale of Adhesives Resins Business" (to Synthomer, ~$1B), 2022. https://www.eastman.com/en/media-center/news-stories/2022/sale-adhesives-resins-business-completion
24. Kraton Corporation, "Kraton Corporation Completes Merger with DL Chemical" (~$2.5B, 2022) and "Pine Chemicals," 2022–2024. https://kraton.com/newsroom/kraton-corporation-completes-merger-with-dl-chemical/
25. Argus Media, "DSM-Firmenich to permanently close Pinova plant," and The Current, "Brunswick chemical plant to be dismantled in 2024," 2023–2024. https://www.argusmedia.com/en/news-and-insights/latest-market-news/2464188-dsm-firmenich-to-permanently-close-pinova-plant
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31. National Cancer Institute, "Coal Tar and Coal-Tar Pitch — Cancer-Causing Substances," and U.S. National Toxicology Program, "15th Report on Carcinogens: Coal Tars and Coal-Tar Pitches," 2021–2024. https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/substances/coal-tar
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33. U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration, "Coal Tar Pitch Volatiles — Solutions," 2024. https://www.osha.gov/coal-tar-pitch-volatiles/solutions
34. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, "Creosote — pesticide registration review," 2024. https://www.epa.gov/ingredients-used-pesticide-products/creosote
35. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, "Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs), Coal-Tar Sealcoat, and Stormwater," and Coal Tar Free America, "Bans" (state/municipal coal-tar sealcoat bans), 2018–2024. https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2018-02/documents/pah_-coal-tar_sealcoat-swpoll.pdf
36. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, "Gum and Wood Chemicals Manufacturing Effluent Guidelines," 40 CFR Part 454, 2024. https://www.epa.gov/eg/gum-and-wood-chemicals-manufacturing-effluent-guidelines
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