Wood Mackenzie: Huntsman Corp., Indorama Ventures Strike $2 Billion Chemical Intermediates Deal

EDINBURGH — August 7, 2019 — Huntsman Corp. announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to sell its chemical intermediates businesses to Indorama Ventures. The total deal is valued at $2.076 billion.

“The combined manufacturing capacity of the production assets involved in the transaction amounts to around 3Mt per annum. With a core heritage and a world scale leading position in PET manufacture, besides strengthening a main part of Indorama’s PET feedstock supply chain (Ethylene/EO/MEG), this acquisition additionally puts Indorama into a number of new derivative product segments for the first time. These include propylene/PO derivatives, surfactants, ethanolamines, glycol ethers and MTBE,” said Andrew Day, Wood Mackenzie Research Director.

Commenting, Patrick Kirby, Wood Mackenzie Principal Analyst, said: “The transaction includes the Port Neches steam cracker, which utilises ethane and propane feedstock for ethylene and propylene production. This will exit Huntsman from the US ethylene business and add a second US steam cracker for Indorama.

“Huntsman was historically a much larger player in the ethylene business with major acquisitions, the biggest being a large portion of ICI’s base chemicals business. As this was Huntsman’s remaining ethylene asset following several divestments, this sale effectively ends Huntsman’s production footprint for ethylene in the US and globally.

“Indorama recently restarted the Lake Charles steam cracker to provide full backward integration into ethylene for existing EO/glycol production in the US market. The addition of the Port Neches asset will expand Indorama’s ethylene capacity in the US by around 50%.”

Posted August 8, 2019

Source: Wood Mackenzie

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