Victrex pushes peaks

Despite being at the forefront of innovation and comprising the UK's largest manufacturing industry — generating around £42 billion of revenue annually — chemical companies (the likes of ICI and Johnson Matthey excluded) hold a relatively low profile with investors.

The performance of London's chemical sector so far this year reflects the struggle. Having surged along with the rest of the market throughout January and February, it crashed once again in mid-March as interest began to wane.

Fortunately, April was a little better, with fully listed Victrex among those applying the greatest upward pressure; its shares galloping towards a two year high on the back of a positive interim trading update.

The company makes its money by producing high-performance polymers for the electronics sector, and claims to have witnessed strong demand from the Asia Pacific, European and North American markets. In all, Victrex shifted 865 tonnes of its main thermoplastic product, PEEK, some 17 per cent ahead of H1 2003, though management admits it is too early to tell whether or not this demand will persist into the second half of the year.

However, while Victrex continued to rise, it was yet another depressing month for specialist foams producer Zotefoams, its share price slipping below the 70p mark for the first time in two years. This latest setback for the company came in spite of chairman Bill Fairservice's recent AGM comments that 'trading has started well in 2004'.