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MOSCOW (MRC) -- Air Liquide has sold its
entities in Greece to Italian gases group SOL for an undisclosed sum, said Chemengonline.
As
part of the divestiture, the existing assets of Air Liquide in Greece have been
transferred to SOL. Air Liquide’s 104 employees in the country are now SOL
employees.
The divestment illustrates Air Liquide’s strategy to review
its asset portfolio regularly and focus its expansion in key industrial regions
in order to increase its geographic density and therefore enhance
performance.
The sales includes Air Liquide Hellas and Vitalaire Hellas.
“The divestment illustrates Air Liquide’s strategy to review its asset portfolio
regularly and focus its expansion in key industrial regions in order to increase
its geographic density and therefore enhance performance,” the company said in a
brief statement.
In a separate statement, SOL said that the acquired Air
Liquide assets include, among others, an air separation unit (ASU), a liquid
carbon dioxide (CO2) production plant, several on-site facilities, along with
more than 1,000 customers.
As MRC wrote earlier, in
September 2020, Air Liquide finalised an agreement with Sasol to acquire the
biggest oxygen production site in the world with a plan to reduce its carbon
dioxide (CO2) emissions by 30%. After the announcement on July 29, the
international major industry gas company has now entered into a business
purchase agreement with Sasol to acquire the oxygen production site in Secunda,
South Africa.
We remind that
Sasol's world-scale US ethane cracker with the capacity of 1.5 mln tonnes per
year reached beneficial operation on 27 August 2019. Sasol's new cracker, the
heart of LCCP, is the third and most significant of the seven LCCP facilities
that came online and will provide feedstock to the company's six new derivative
units at Sasol's Lake Charles multi-asset site.
Ethylene and propylene
are feedstocks for producing polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene
(PP).
According to MRC's ScanPlast report,
Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 2,220,640 tonnes in 2020, up by 2%
year on year. Only shipments of low density polyethylene (LDPE) and high density
polyethylene (HDPE) increased. At the same time, polypropylene (PP) shipments to
the Russian market reached 1 240,000 tonnes in 2020 (calculated using the
formula: production, minus exports, plus imports, excluding producers'
inventories as of 1 January, 2020).
Established in 1909, Air Liquide Hellas, and its controlled subsidiary
Vitalaire HealthcareHellas, is a leading player in the merchant technical
gases and home care markets in Greece. SOL Group is already present in the Greek
market through its subsidiaries: SOL Hellas and VIVISOL Hellas which operate
since many years respectively in the technical gases market and in the home care
market. ALH can leverage on a solid asset base, which includes 1 ASU (Air
Separation Unit), 1 liquid CO2 production plant, several on-site facilities, 2
filling centers and a complete supply chain of equipment covering the whole
country, along with a diversified customer base with more than 1,000 customers
served through on-site plants, bulk or cylinder contracts, a longstanding
relationship with customers driven by an high level of services and customer
satisfaction with more than EUR20 Million revenues in 2019 and a full
experienced team of 104 employees with strong knowledge of the business and
local market. |
