Arkema to Acquire Total’s Photocure and Coatings Resins Business

Arkema is set to acquire the coatings resins and photocure resins businesses of Total’s specialty chemicals activities for a €550 million. The acquisition expands Arkema’s position in the global coatings resins market and further increases the downstream integration of its acrylics chain, while offering major potential for growth and synergies.

The businesses concerned include the coatings resins of Cray Valley (Europe, Asia, South Africa) and Cook Composite Polymers (United States), as well as the photocure resins of Sartomer (Europe, United States, Asia). These make up a coherent group of specialty products used in the high value-added paints and industrial coatings markets.

With growing sales of approximately €850 million, and almost 1,750 employees on some twenty sites around the world, these activities enhance Arkema’s current position in the markets for emulsions, rheology additives, fluorinated polymers and copolymers, among others.

With a wider product range including emulsions, photocure resins, rheology additives, alkyd resins, powder resins, fluorinated polymers and copolymers, Arkema is in a position to serve its customers throughout the world as a leading material suppliers to the coatings market.

By acquiring Sartomer, Arkema becomes the world’s co-leader in the photocure resins market. As high value-added technical products in the downstream acrylics sector, these resins offer a significant growth potential in a wide range of markets such as graphic arts, optics and electronics.
In particular, this acquisition provides Arkema with new growth drivers in Asia allowing it to use Cray Valley’s facilities in India and Malaysia and Sartomer’s newly opened plant near Canton, China.

This acquisition would at the same time bolster Arkema’s downstream acrylics activities as a logical follow-up to the acquisition of Coatex in 2007 and to the acquisition of the emulsions purchased from Dow in North America at the beginning of 2010. The acrylic downstream integration would reach 40 percent, the company said.

The deal should be closed in the first half of 2011.