Sanmar to acquire Caustic Soda Plant in Egypt

Chennai, Nov 16 (UNI) The Sanmar group has signed agreements for acquiring a Caustic Soda Plant in Port Said, Egypt and an Engineering Unit in Germany at a cost of 200 million US dollars and 16 million Euros, respectively.

A company release here said the chemical business at Port Said belonged to Trust Chemical Industries, which owned the Caustic Soda Plant with a capacity of 2,00,000 tonnes per annum.

The Egyptian company had launched its operations an year back and the plant had facilities to manufacture chlorine-based products like Hydrochloric acid, Chlorinated Paraffin Wax, Sodium Hypochloride and Ferric Chloride.

After the acqusition, the Sanmar group, with significant capital invesments would evaluate the possibility of manufacturing further products like Ethylene Dichloride (EDC) and Vinyl Chloro Monomer (VCM) by using the available Chlorine at Port Said, the relase added.

The release said if the EDC and VCM manufacturing was taken up at Egypt, it could be a possible supply source for Chemplast in future.

The Sanmar group had also entered into a MoU to acquire a majority stake in an engineering unit in Germany involved in SG Iron castings and design and machining of auto components.

The acquisition, if completed, would involve the group acquiring 80 per cent of the outstanding equity capital of the company valued at 16 million Euros.

Sanmar group was currently involved in capital expenditure programme towards conversion of the Caustic Soda facilities at Mettur to Membrane Process, installation of a 50 MW coal-based power plant at Mettur and setting up of a green-field 1,70,000 tonne per annum PVC manufactring facility at Cuddalore based on bought out VCM.

It said the Board of Directors of Chemplast had approved raising equity resources on rights basis, to the tune of Rs 2,000 crores. The company was in the process of filing draft offer documents with SEBI.

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