The industry news sector of the K Portal has published the following interesting news; WANHUA: Two isocyanate acquisitions / Swedish plant manufacturer Chematur and China’s Connell Polyurethane
After a long break, the world market leader in isocyanate (Yantai, Shandong) is on a shopping spree again. The Chinese company acquired not only MDI/TDI process specialist and plant manufacturer Chematur Engineering (Karlskoga / Sweden), but also a majority stake in the smaller Chinese MDI producer Connell Polyurethane. Connells current plans for a 400,000 t/y plant mean that Wanhua would strengthen its leading position and increase its distance from world number two, BASF (Ludwigshafen / Germany).
Wanhua is paying CNY 925m (just under EUR 120m) for Chematur, which has expertise that includes plants for hydrogen peroxide and bioethanol derivatives in addition to MDI and TDI. In 2018, Chematur generated sales of SEK 115m (approximately EUR 10m) and an operating profit of SEK 22.4m.
According to PIEs Polyglobe database, Wanhua operates global capacities totalling 2.75m t/y of MDI and TDI, which is closely followed by BASF with 2.62m t/y excluding the German companys JV shares in China. In Europe, the MDI and TDI plants located at Wanhuas isocyanate producer BorsodChem (Kazincbarcika / Hungary) are still down for maintenance. However, these are expected to be restarted in mid-August if everything goes according to plan.
Source: K-online.com
