MOSCOW (MRC) -- Nouryon completed the acquisition of US-based JM Huber’s carboxymethyl cellulose (CMC) business, said Chemweek.
The acquisition price was not disclosed, but at the time of the initial announcement in January, Nouryon said the business generated sales of around EUR135m per year. The deal includes a production plant and research and development facility in in Aanekoski, Finland, with 248 employees.
CMCs are bio-based water-soluble polymers that are used as thickeners, binders, stabilisers and film formers. The purchase of JM Huber’s assets significantly deepening Nouryon’s portfolio in the space, the company said.
Nouryon, which was spun off from AkzoNobel, has also pursued a series of acquisitions in the triethyl aluminium (TEAL) space during the last year, including Sasol’s merchant business for the polymer catalyst, and China-based firm Zhejiang Friend Chemical.
As MRC wrote previously, in February 2019, Nouryon (formerly AkzoNobel Specialty Chemicals) announced that it would license its innovative continuous initiator dosing (CiD) technology to Karpatnaftochim, Ukraine’s largest polyvinyl chloride (PVC) producer. Nouryon’s patented CiD technology allows PVC producers to increase reactor output by up to 40 percent, improve product quality, and make the production process intrinsically safer - all with minimum capital expenditure.
We remind that Russia's output of chemical products rose in May 2020 by 4.4% year on year. Thus, production of basic chemicals increased year on year by 5.4% in the first five months of 2020, according to Rosstat's data. According to the Federal State Statistics Service of the Russian Federation, polymers in primary form accounted for the greatest increase in the output in January-May.
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