MOSCOW (MRC) -- Air Liquide says it has closed the sale of its subsidiary Schulke & Mayr (Norderstedt, Germany) to private equity firm EQT (Stockholm, Sweden) for up to EUR1 billion (USD1.17 billion). The two companies entered into exclusive negotiations in April, said Chemweek.
The total value of the transaction, which is subject to an earn-out provision, is between €925 million and €1 billion, it says. The deal “illustrates Air Liquide’s strategy to review its business portfolio regularly and to focus on its core gases and healthcare businesses,” it says. The company intends to continue to develop its healthcare activities, while providing Schulke “with the best opportunity for its long-term development," it adds.
Schulke is a global leader in infection prevention and hygiene solutions, with a proposed disposal of the company by Air Liquide first revealed in November last year. The acquisition would be by EQT’s EQT VIII fund, the companies said in April when confirming they had entered into exclusive talks.
Christian Last, Schulke’s CEO, welcomed EQT as the company’s new shareholder, saying it would “continue to focus on launching new and innovative products and leveraging our customer partnerships worldwide.” Together with EQT, Schulke will shape the continuous development and growth of the company, led by Last, based on shared and sustainable values, the company states.
"Schulke is a very impressive company with a long track record of developing innovative hygiene solutions to help protect people’s health. The dedication and hard work of the entire team during the current pandemic has underlined this once again. EQT is now looking forward to supporting Schulke’s management team as the company enters the next chapter of its long growth history,” says Matthias Wittkowski, partner at EQT Partners.
Schulke, founded in 1889 in Hamburg, operates three production sites in Germany, France, and Brazil.
As MRC informed earlier, Air Liquide has entered into a long-term supply agreement with NLMK Group (Moscow) that will see it invest around EUR100 million (USD114 million) in the steel producer’s site at Lipetsk, Russia, on the construction of a new air separation unit (ASU) and the acquisition of existing hydrogen and rare gases production units.
We remind that Shell Singapore restarted its naphtha cracker in Bukom Island in early December 2019, following a two months maintenance shutdown since the beginning of October 2019. Thus, this cracker was taken off-stream for the turnaround on 1 October 2019. The cracker is able to produce 960,000 tons/year of ethylene and 550,000 tons/year of propylene.
Ethylene and propylene are feedstocks for producing polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP).
According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 595,170 tonnes in the first five month of 2020, up by 10% year on year. Deliveries of all ethylene polymers, except for linear low density polyethylene (LLDPE), rose partially because of an increase in capacity utilisation at ZapSibNeftekhim. At the same time, PP shipments to the Russian market was 457,930 tonnes in January-May 2020 (calculated by the formula production minus export plus import). Deliveris of exclusively PP random copolymer increased.
MRC