How Chemical Buyers Are Finding Suppliers in 2026

Chemical distribution is a nearly €500 billion global market. BCG estimates the third-party distribution market will reach €485 billion in 2026, almost evenly split between commodity and speciality chemicals. At the top end of the market, Brenntag alone generated $17.8 billion in 2025. 

But size isn’t making the sector immune to a difficult and increasingly unpredictable operating environment. 

The wider chemicals industry entered 2026 in what ICIS describes as a ‘prolonged downcycle’, with pressure on margins compounded by geopolitical uncertainty, shifting global trade flows, China’s drive for greater self-sufficiency and mounting cost and regulatory pressures in Europe. McKinsey goes further, arguing that some of the industry’s challenges now appear structural rather than simply cyclical, with capacity additions continuing to outpace consumer growth across several major markets. 

For distributors sitting between chemical producers and the businesses that rely on their products, those pressures create both risk and opportunity. 

The impact has been visible in the performance of the industry’s biggest players. Azelis entered 2026 after four consecutive quarters of organic revenue decline, then returned to organic growth in Q2. Its latest results still describe limited market visibility and high volatility. Brenntag, meanwhile, reported an 11% YoY increase in Q2 sales to €4.3 billion, helped by higher chemical pricing as conflict in the Middle East pressured global supply chains.

Security of supply has consequently returned to the forefront. In its 2026 ranking of the world’s leading chemical distributors, ICIS highlighted the role distributors play in maintaining supply as global disruption continues. 

94% of business buyers now use AI somewhere in their buying process. 

That’s according to Forrester’s 2026 research of nearly 18,000 global business buyers, which found that generative AI and conversational search are increasingly used throughout the buying journey. 

But this isn’t a story about AI replacing every other channel. 

The buyer still uses Google. They still visit suppliers’ websites, read technical documentation, look for recommendations, compare products and speak to people they trust. 

What’s changing is how those sources of information connect. 

Traditional search has largely been built around keywords: a buyer searches for a product, supplier or service and works through the results. AI search allows them to start with a much more complex question or problem. 

Which UK distributors can supply this chemical at the specification I need? Who has experience in my industry? What alternatives should I consider? Which suppliers have the strongest technical support?

AI platforms can interpret the brands, products, services, industries and expertise behind those questions, understand the relationships between them and synthesise information from multiple sources into an answer. 

So the opportunity isn’t simply to ‘rank in AI’. It’s to build a digital footprint that makes your business easy to find, understand and recommend wherever buyers are looking. 

Product performance will always be the most important thing for chemical buyers, but increasingly, the product itself is only part of the decision. 

Accenture’s 2025 Chemical Global Buyer Value Study found that reliable delivery and quality technical support now rank immediately behind product performance among customers’ priorities. And that wider experience has commercial value: 43% of customers said they would buy at least 10% more if their needs were fully met, while 36% would pay a premium of 5% or more. 

For chemical distributors, this creates a much broader consideration journey. 

Buyers aren’t only evaluating whether a distributor stocks the chemical or specific ingredient they need. Depending on the person, product and application, they may also need to understand technical suitability, formulation and support, regulatory requirements, alternative products, documentation, availability and security of supply – the list is vast. 

This isn’t entirely new; research into speciality chemical distribution has long identified expertise and service as key criteria when purchasing, but what is changing is how much of that evaluation now happens digitally before ever speaking to a distributor. 

A buyer looking for an alternative ingredient doesn’t need to begin with a shortlist of suppliers. They can search for the problem they are trying to solve. They can research technical documentation, compare products and evaluate expertise across websites, search engines, publications and social channels. 

Increasingly, they can ask an LLM to do much of that work for them.

Our own analysis of buyer journeys across eight leading chemical distributors reflected this complexity. Rather than simply looking for suppliers of a particular chemical, the research moved into questions around technical specifications, alternative materials, regulatory documentation, supply reliability, certifications and commercial considerations. 

That changes the digital visibility challenge considerably. For distributors, being discoverable for a product name or category is still important, but if buyers are also looking for the expertise and reassurance around the product, a distributor has a much wider set of searches, questions, and conversations in which to appear. 

So the question is no longer whether a distributor ranks, but whether search engines and LLMs have enough evidence to understand why that distributor might be the right answer in the first place. 

AI platforms can interpret the brands, products, services, industries and expertise behind those questions, understand the relationships between them and synthesise information from multiple sources into an answer. 

So the opportunity isn’t simply to ‘rank in AI’. It’s to build a digital footprint that makes your business easy to find, understand and recommend wherever buyers are looking. 

We went beyond individual prompts, using synthetic buyer personas to simulate multi-stage research journeys where one answer informs the next question, much closer to the way someone might actually use an LLM during supplier research. 

For example, one journey began by identifying distributors capable of supplying critical raw materials with the necessary regulatory compliance, then progressed to certifications, RFQ processes, pricing, supply-chain risk, and ultimately a supplier recommendation.  

Another explored water-treatment suppliers specifically through the lens of hazmat delivery, technical support and just-in-time scheduling. 

The aim isn’t to see whether an LLM knew these brands, but to understand when they appeared, what they were associated with, and how that visibility changed as buyer questions became more specific. Knowing where your business shows up and where it doesn’t provide clear content gaps that need addressing across digital channels. 

Using LLMLens, our proprietary AI search intelligent platform, we explored how these businesses appear when potential buyers use LLMs to research the market. Looking at visibility across relevant topics and simulated buyer journeys rather than relying on a handful of individual prompts. The result gives us a broader picture of what visibility looks like in chemical distribution in 2026, and where the biggest opportunities are emerging.

One of the clearest findings from our analysis was that brand visibility alone doesn’t tell the whole story. 

Across the chemical distributors we analysed, LLMs frequently recognised and mentioned established brands. In our most recent test, several of the distributors achieved a 100% mention rate across the prompts where they were measured.

But being mentioned is only one measure of visibility. We saw much greater variation when we looked at citations—whether the LLM was actually using a brand or its content as a source in its response. In the same run, citation rates among the distributors varied from 0% to 100%. That’s an important distinction.

A well-established chemical distributor might already have enough brand presence for an LLM to recognise it as a major player. But recognition doesn’t necessarily mean that brand is influencing the information being presented to a potential customer, and as buyer questions become more specific, that distinction becomes increasingly important. 

Someone asking for ‘leading chemical distributors’ is one thing; someone asking which distributor can provide a particular product or demonstrate regulatory compliance is looking for evidence. 

For marketers, AI visibility isn’t simply a question of ‘does ChatGPT mention us?’ It’s about understanding where your brand appears, what it’s associated with and whether the wider digital footprint gives LLMs enough evidence to use you as part of the answer.

For chemical distributors, visibility has traditionally been closely connected to products. Does your website rank for the chemicals and ingredients you supply? Can a buyer find the relevant product page? Are you capturing demand when someone is actively looking for a distributor?

Those things still matter. But our research suggests the opportunity, and the challenge, is becoming much broader.

Buyers are researching applications, alternatives, technical requirements, compliance, supply and the wider questions surrounding a product. That creates opportunities to build organic visibility much earlier in the research journey.

Chemical distributors have huge amounts of specialist knowledge within their businesses, from formulation and application expertise to regulatory and sector-specific knowledge. Turning that expertise into useful, accessible digital content gives buyers more ways to discover a brand and more reasons to trust it once they do.

Buyers don’t make decisions based on a single source, and neither do LLMs. Digital PR, industry coverage, expert commentary, partnerships and other credible third-party mentions all contribute to the wider digital footprint surrounding a brand. Research we’ve previously analysed found that eight of the ten strongest factors associated with AI visibility related to brand or backlink profiles.

Particularly in a sector where searches can become highly specific, paid and organic shouldn’t be viewed in isolation. Our experience working on paid media and SEO within the chemicals industry has shown us the value of understanding exactly how specialist audiences search and using that intelligence across channels.

And increasingly, marketers need to understand how their brands appear within LLMs too.

This doesn’t mean abandoning SEO to chase a new acronym. Many of the things that make a brand useful and authoritative across traditional digital channels – strong content, clear expertise, technical information, brand authority and credible third-party coverage – also contribute to the digital footprint that AI systems encounter.

What is changing is the outcome we’re trying to influence.

For years, one of the defining questions in search marketing has been:

Do we rank when someone searches for what we sell?

Now there’s another question:

Are we recommended when someone asks who can solve their problem?

For chemical distributors, that distinction feels particularly important. Buyers are looking for far more than a product, and increasingly they have tools capable of researching far more than a product on their behalf.

The distributors that build the strongest digital visibility won’t simply be the ones that appear for the most chemical names. They’ll be the ones that make it easiest for buyers, and the technology helping those buyers, to understand what they know, what problems they solve and why they should be considered.