UK SIC 2007 · 20301
Manufacture of paints, varnishes and similar coatings, mastics and sealants (SIC code 20301)
Manufacture of paints, varnishes and similar coatings, mastics and sealants is UK SIC code 20301. It sits in division 20 (Manufacture of chemicals and chemical products) of the SIC 2007 list. On the August 2026 Companies House register, 595 active UK companies list 20301 among their SIC codes. 565 of them list it first.
Division 20 covers industrial chemistry. The busiest corner of it on the UK register is 20420, manufacture of perfumes and toilet preparations. That code holds the indie beauty boom: skincare, candle and cosmetics brands, soap makers and fragrance houses. Many are recent start-ups blending in small batches. The rest of the division is older and heavier. It holds makers of paints, cleaning products, adhesives and industrial chemicals. A kitchen-table skincare label and a coatings plant share one division, which makes it an odd mix.
Related SIC codes
Who prospects SIC 20301 companies
Insurance brokers sell here for one reason. Product liability cover is essential for anything you put on skin. A new cosmetics brand needs it before its first sale. Regulatory consultants doing safety assessments and cosmetics compliance chase the same new companies. So do contract manufacturers and packaging suppliers. A young company with a weak website is usually mid-launch, which is when all of those services get bought. At the industrial end, growth and filing activity tell you more. They point to buying rounds for equipment, compliance and specialist staff.
Lead generation for accountants & bookkeepers →How to read SIC 20301
SIC 20301 is a five-digit code, and the digits are not arbitrary. The first two, 20, are the division, manufacture of chemicals and chemical products. Add the third and you have group 203; the fourth narrows it to a class, and the fifth to the subclass, which is the level Companies House actually asks a company to pick. The whole division sits under section C, manufacturing, the broadest tier there is. Reading a code left to right therefore goes from a whole sector down to one activity.
More on how SIC 20301 is built
A company chooses its own codes when it incorporates and can change them on any confirmation statement. It may list up to four, and Companies House does not check whether they are right. That is why 20301 is worth reading as a claim the company made about itself rather than as a verified fact, and why the first-position and any-position counts above differ.
Measured on the August 2026 register, the busiest registered-office post towns for 20301 are London (78), Manchester (15), Bristol (11), Beckenham (9) and Cleckheaton (9). Those are registered-office locations, which is where the paperwork sits rather than necessarily where the work happens, so treat them as where to start looking rather than as a service area.
Using SIC 20301 as a filter
595 companies is 0.01 per cent of the 5,190,464 active companies on the UK register, and ranks 20301 5th most used of the 6 codes we track in division 20. That is the pool before any filter. Whether it is a big market for you depends on what you sell, but it is the number every other filter on this page cuts down from.
More on filtering by SIC 20301
Almost everybody who uses 20301 means it: 565 of 595 companies put it first, leaving only 30 carrying it as a secondary code. That makes it an unusually clean filter. You can match on the code alone and trust that the companies you get really are in this line of work.
These companies are spread out. London is the largest single cluster at 13 per cent and the top five post towns together hold only 21 per cent, so the remaining 79 per cent sits across the rest of the country. A regional filter narrows this list without gutting it, which makes it a reasonable code to work territory by territory.
In practice the code on its own is rarely the whole filter. Pair 20301 with an incorporation date to catch companies in their first months, when they are still choosing suppliers, or with a filing deadline to reach them while the year end is on their mind. A worked example for this code: 20301, registered office in London, incorporated in the last ninety days, which turns a 595 company pool into a list you can write to in an afternoon. Add the poor-website filter if what you sell is a website, or a recent change of officer if you sell to whoever just took the job. Every company you pull carries the Companies House record, the director's name, a verified website and a verified email, and the ones we cannot complete are not charged.
Where SIC 20301 clusters in the UK
ACTIVE COMPANIES BY REGISTERED-OFFICE POST TOWN · COMPANIES HOUSE REGISTER, AUGUST 2026
SIC 20301 companies, as leads
Live rows from the enriched register. Email and phone values are withheld until you sign up.
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About SIC 20301
How many UK companies use SIC code 20301?
595 active UK companies list 20301 (Manufacture of paints, varnishes and similar coatings, mastics and sealants) among their registered SIC codes. Each company may register up to four. Of those, 565 put it first. The figures come from the August 2026 Companies House register snapshot, and count active companies only.
Which SIC code should a small cosmetics or candle business choose?
If you make the products yourself, 20420 is the closest fit. It is manufacture of perfumes and toilet preparations, and it covers cosmetics, soaps and toiletries. Candle makers often use it too, or choose a code from division 32. If you only sell goods made by others, a retail code suits you better. The choice is self-declared and carries no regulatory weight. Cosmetics rules apply based on what you actually do.
Does registering under a chemicals SIC code bring extra reporting requirements?
Not from Companies House. It treats every SIC code the same for filing purposes. Duties like REACH registration, cosmetics product notifications and COSHH compliance come from your real activities and products. They never come from the code on the public record. Keep the code accurate anyway. Banks, insurers and trade customers use it to understand your business before they deal with you.
Find UK SIC 20301 companies
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