Sanmar group acquires chemical business in Egpt at $200 mln

New Delhi, Nov 16 (UNI) The Sanmar Group Ltd has entered into an agreement to acquire the chemical business owned by Trust Chemical Industries in Port Said, Egypt for 200 million dollars.

The group is also in the process to acquire a majority stake in an engineering unit in Germany involved in SG Iron castings and design/machining of auto components and has signed a meomorandum of understanding (MoU) in this direction, group company Chemplast Senmar said today in a statement.

As per the agreement the group will acquires 80 per cent of the outstanding equity capital of the company valued at Euro 16 million.

The Trust Chemical owns a Caustic Soda plant with a capacity of two lakh tonnes per annum. The plant commenced operations a little over a year ago.

The plant also has facilities to manufacture chlorine-based products such as hydrochloric acid, chlorinated paraffin wax, sodium hypochlorite and ferric chloride.

On completing the acquisition, the Sanmar Group would evaluate the possibility of manufacture of more products at Port Said, including ethylene dichloride and vinyl chloro monomer with significant capital investments.

The group also intends to operate this as a separate business headquartered at Port Said, and is in the process of identifying a top management team for it.

Sanmar's existing chemical venture in India is involved in a capital expenditure programme towards conversion of the caustic soda facilities at Mettur into membrane process, installation of a coal-based power plant of 50 MW capacity at Mettur, and setting up a greenfield PVC manufacturing facility at Cuddalore with a capacity of 1.7 lakh tonnes per annum based on bought-out VCM.

It has plans to raise equity resources on rights basis not exceeding Rs 200 crore and is in the process of filing draft offer documents with SEBI, for the same.

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