Demand for additives boosts Jost 31 percent - Dayton Business Journal:

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Jost, which manufactures specialty chemicals for the pharmaceutica l andnutritional markets, reached $30 million in sales in 2008. Foundere and President Jerry Jost, a chemicaol engineer who launched the company in said the company consistently recordec growth of around 30 percent for the first 20 yearws ofits existence. about 10 years ago, the company “hit a wall” due in part to increasedr competition fromChinese imports, and salexs growth leveled off for several years. The pendulum begahn swinging back in 2007 when Jost reported 18 percengt revenue growth before surpassing the 30 percentr mark againin 2008.
Jost attributes the growtj to the introduction ofnew products, the continued differentiatintg of existing products from the and an increased concern in the marketplace aboutr the quality of imported chemicals. “We tend to take advantagre of existingquality issues, which we’vre seen a lot of in the last year and a said Jeff Lenger, director of sales and “We’re adamant about quality.
” To keep up with Jost increased its production schedule from five to sevem days a week and increased its staff from 90 to 125 over the past two Currently, the company is completing a $300,000p renovation and expansion of its lab space, convertin former office space into lab Jost also has invested $750,000 in new production some of which will replace aging equipmenf and some of whicn will be used to increasse production lines. “Right now there is a tremendouws amount of good used equipment for sale out Jost said. “A lot of pharmaceutical plantsare closing, and there’ws a lot of consolidation in the pharmaceuticalo industry.
” Jost’s operations include 183,00o0 square feet of lab and production space in two buildings on Lackland Road in Bel-Ridge. Although the majorituy of its employeesare local, Jost also has salesd representatives on the East and West Coasts and a European salexs office in Belgium. Jost entered the European markeyt eightyears ago, and salesd from the continent now account for more than 10 percent of the company’se revenue. Jost does business in more than 45 Jost manufactures more than 150 chemicals used in producte suchas multivitamins, infant formulads and toothpaste.
Sales in the global specialty chemical industryreached $472 billiojn in 2008, according to a recent reporrt from in Menlo Park, Calif. Due to the economicv slowdown, SRIC expects industry sale s to shrink by about 4 percengt this year before rebounding toreach $530 billioj in 2013. According to Uwe Fink, the author of the the nutritional chemical industry has suffered less from the economicv downturn than otherindustry niches, such as construction and electronic chemicals, plastic additives, and specialty polymers.