Following the request of a PET-producing company that produces some other chemicals and fibers as well, the company will stop producing PET materials next week.
The decision was approved by the company’s executives and after several months of negotiations to buy the opportunity to repay the large debts that the PET supplying company owes to the raw material supplier (high purity terephthalic acid), which had no successful result.
The debt is estimated at $ 49 million. The company also has not paid its employees for several months. The series of events that ended to application for filing an insolvency file and filing a bankruptcy is as follows.
On Oct. 17th. the official website of the company, published the following announcement:
Mossi Ghisolfi Group files for “concordato preventivo”
The Mossi Ghisolfi Group announces that the companies:
- Mossi & Ghisolfi S.p.A.
- M&G Finanziaria S.p.A.
- Biochemtex S.p.A.
- Beta Renewables S.r.l.
- Italian Bio Products S.r.l.
- IBP Energia S.r.l.
- M&G Polimeri S.p.A.
- Acetati Immobiliare S.p.A.
have filed, before the Tribunal of Alessandria, an application for admission to the arrangement with creditors procedure (“Concordato Preventivo”) in accordance with article 161 sixth paragraph of the Bankruptcy Law, in order to ensure the equal treatment of creditors.
The companies are studying a proposal for an arrangement that will allow their overall activities to continue as a going concern, although they cannot exclude alternative solutions at the end of the ongoing technical assessments.
Now, the companies “are studying a proposal” for an arrangement that will allow their overall activities to continue as a going concern, officials said in the posting, although they cannot exclude “alternative solutions.”
Tortona-based M&G’s struggles include an inability to finance a massive PET resin project — known as Project Jumbo — in Corpus Christi, Texas. Numerous contractors working at the site have said that they have not been paid. Construction contractor Fluor Enterprises laid off almost 300 workers at the site in September.
M&G also owes $49 million to Mexican conglomerate Alpek SAB de CV for supplies of PET feedstock purified terephthalic acid (PTA). In September, Alpek announced that it was stopping shipments of a PET feedstock to two plants operated by M&G in Mexico and Brazil as a result of the debt.
According to published reports, M&G has stopped PET production at its 1.2 billion-pound capacity plant in Altamira, Mexico. The firm also had filed notice with local officials that it would stop production at its PET plant in Apple Grove, W.Va., which has annual production capacity of almost 800 million pounds.
The Mossi Ghisolfi Group was founded in 1953 in Tortona (Alessandria, Italy) by Vittorio Ghisolfi. From the outset, the company has dealt with the production of plastic packaging material.
As the first company to introduce PET in Italy and across Europe, Mossi Ghisolfi has remained on the cutting edge of the development of this material, which has become an irreplaceable part of food packaging.
The company’s evolution has been characterised by strong growth in markets around the world in the plastics and polyester sectors, and it has become one of the global leaders in the PET field. Over the past 10 years, the group’s production volume has almost tripled, rising from 600,000 to 1.7 million tonnes of PET per year.
The Mossi Ghisolfi Group is controlled by M&G Finanziaria, which is owned by the Ghisolfi family.
The group’s activities are sub-divided into the following businesses:
- PET, its raw materials, and engineering relating to plants for these products: it is in this area that the companies controlled by M&G Chemicals operate in the Americas and Asia, including Chemtex. Chemtex specialises in the design and construction of plants for the production of chemical compounds;
- Biofuels, chemical products derived from non-food biomass and engineering relating to these plants: it is in this area that the Biochemtex, Beta Renewables, Biochemtex Agro and IBP companies operate. The operations on renewables are carried out for the most part in Italy.
- Polyester fibre: this business operates exclusively in Brazil;
- Polimeri Italia – European PET resin production industry, including production of biodegradable polymers: plant located in Patrica (Italy).
