Teijin Limited has agreed to acquire Continental Structural Plastics Holdings Corporation (CSP), an automotive composite supplier in North America, for US$825 million.
The shares of CSP will be purchased by Teijin Holdings USA Inc, the Teijin Group’s holding company in the US. The acquisition is scheduled to be completed in December 2016 after satisfaction of customary closing conditions, including regulatory approval.
CSP, which will become a wholly owned subsidiary of Teijin, is one of the leading manufacturers of thermoset composites in the automotive industry and is reportedly the world’s largest sheet molding compound (SMC) manufacturer for automakers.
The company has 14 facilities in the US, Mexico, France and China and approximately 3,200 employees. It posted consolidated sales of over US$634 million in the fiscal year ending December 31, 2015.
Teijin said the company will benefit from CSP’s established sales channels in the North American automotive market, which will enable the combined business to provide a broader range of solutions that meet automakers’ demands for weight reduction and durability, utilizing its thermoplastic composite technologies.
Through this transaction, the Japanese material supplier aims to become an automotive solution provider by expanding its offerings beyond carbon fiber and glass fiber materials, in collaboration with other materials manufacturers. The automotive composite products business of the Teijin Group is targeting annual sales of US$2.0 billion by 2030.
“We are confident that the platform for automotive composite products business we will gain through the acquisition of CSP’s complementary technical expertise in thermoset composites and GFRP know-how will trigger further development of our integrated high-performance materials business, one of our key strategic fields,” said Jun Suzuki, President and CEO of Teijin Limited.
The combination of CSP’s thermoset capabilities, especially its glass fiber reinforced plastics (GFRP) technology, and Teijin’s high performance composites such as carbon fiber reinforced thermoplastic (CFRTP), will help reduce weight and component count in finished products. This will in turn improve recycling efficiency and offer automakers value-added solutions that meet their requirements for more environmentally friendly components at lower cost.
“Utilizing such synergy effects, and as outlined in our 2014 Transformation and Growth Strategies in Revised Medium-Term Management Plan, Teijin aims to provide consistent upstream-to-downstream solutions and realize one of the company’s growth concepts, which is high-performance materials technologies that create new value,” said Suzuki.
News Source : China Plastic & Rubber Journal
