Huntsman Completes Acquisition Of Rockwood’s Performance Additives And Titanium Dioxide Businesses

Huntsman Corporation  has completed the acquisition of the Performance Additives and Titanium Dioxide (TiO2) businesses of Rockwood Holdings, Inc.

“The successful completion of this acquisition better positions our company,” said Peter R. Huntsman, president and CEO of Huntsman Corporation said. “It will be immediately accretive to our earnings before synergies of $130 million and provides further optionality for our pigments business.The addition of specialty titanium dioxide and performance additives will broaden our product offering and further enable our ability to build the most competitive and successful pigments and additives business in the world.  The majority of earnings over the past 12 months have come from their specialty and niche TiO2 businesses, demonstrating the diversity and breadth of the business we are acquiring.”

“Our existing business continues to perform very well,” he added. “We see excellent growth for products such as our MDI polyurethanes, amines and aerospace composites and we have a number of projects underway that will fuel this growth.  With the addition of the Rockwood businesses, we are well on our way to achieving our EBITDA goal of $2 billion within the next couple of years.”

The following businesses were acquired from Rockwood: Performance Additives: functional additives made from barium and zinc based inorganics used to make colors more brilliant primarily in plastics, coatings, films, food, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals and paper; color pigments made from synthetic iron-oxide and other non-TiO2 inorganic pigments used by manufacturers of coatings and colorants; timber treatment wood protection chemicals used primarily in residential and commercial applications; water treatment products used to improve water purity in industrial, commercial and municipal applications; specialty automotive molded components and TiO2: itanium dioxide, a white pigment derived from titanium bearing ores with strong specialty business  in  fibers, inks, pharmaceuticals, food and cosmetics.

Huntsman paid approximately $1 billion in cash and assumed certain unfunded European pension liabilities.