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Spain Chemical Industry
Since the 1970s, the chemical industry had been one of
Spain's largest, and it continued to grow in the 1980s. By
the
mid-1980s, it accounted for about 7 percent of the Spanish
work
force and 8 percent of the country's total industrial
production.
With its share of exports at about 10 percent of the
national
total, it was the third-largest export industry. In 1985
chemical
exports stood at US$1.8 billion, increasing by a further
16
percent in 1986. The Spanish chemical industry had
received a
substantial amount of foreign investment capital and new
technology, and in 1987 about 30 percent of its output
came from
foreign-owned companies. Although many of it's raw
materials,
including those for petrochemical production, had to be
imported,
the industry benefited from Spain's deposits of pyrites,
potash,
and mercury. The largest components of the chemical
industry were
those producing plastics, petrochemicals, pharmaceuticals,
rubber
manufactures, fertilizers, paints, and dyes. All of these
areas
registered substantial gains in the 1980s.
As part of its policy of merging Spanish firms into
larger
entities better able to compete with foreign companies,
the
government prodded the country's largest chemical firm,
Rio Tinto
Explosives, to merge with the second-largest such
enterprise,
Cros, in 1988. By the time the merger occurred, sizable
portions
of both companies were controlled by the Kuwait Investment
Office
(KIO), which managed both public and private Kuwaiti
funds. The
fertilizer interests of the two companies were combined to
form a
new company, Fosforico Espanol, and Rio Tinto ceded its
considerable defense interests.
Data as of December 1988
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