ILUKA RESOURCES: Plans to purchase African titanium dioxide producer Sierra Rutile / EUR 250m deal to wrap up in early September
Australian titanium dioxide producer Iluka Resources (Perth; www.iluka.com) has offered to pay GBP 215m (about EUR 249m) to acquire Sierra Rutile (Freetown / Sierra Leone; www.sierra-rutile.com) – another mineral sands specialist. The purchase is conditional upon the agreement of Sierra Rutile’s shareholders, who are due to meet and discuss the matter on 1 September. If all goes as planned, the acquisition could be wrapped up by 9 September, the two companies said.
Iluka plans to merge Sierra Rutile with a new company, to be called Iluka Investments, which in turn will become a subsidiary operated by Iluka International (West Africa).
The news comes as the latest shakeup in the global TiO2 market, which until recently had been comparatively quiet since 2013. Before that, producers had suffered a slump in sales and many scaled back or delayed their expansion projects in response (see Plasteurope.com of 26.02.2013). Following some consolidation in the market – including DuPont‘s (Wilmington, Delaware / USA; www.dupont.com) decision to spin off its TiO2 activities in Chemours (see Plasteurope.com of 22.12.2014) and Huntsman’s (The Woodlands, Texas / USA; www.huntsman.com) numerous plant shutdowns ahead of a proposed divestiture (for most recent coverage, see Plasteurope.com of 02.08.2016) – prices for the white pigment have been rising of late, taking a number of polymers, such as dry PVC blends (see Plasteurope.com of 02.08.2016), along for the ride.
