Eastman To Sell PET, PTA European Facilities To Indorama

Eastman Chemical Company has announced the signing of a definitive agreement to sell its PET facility at Worthington, UK and its PET and PTA facilities and related businesses based at Rotterdam in the Netherlands to the Indorama Group. The total cash proceeds are expected to be Euros 226 million (about US$ 330million). The transaction is expected to be completed during the first quarter of 2008. The sale is in line with their decision to divest non-strategic PET assets outside the USA. Eastman’s acetate tow facility at Worthington is not included in the sale. According to Gregory Nelson, Eastman’s Executive Vice President and head of the polymers business group, “This is an important step in our broader strategy to improve the overall performance of our PET polymers business.”

The Indorama Group was founded in 1976 in Indonesia by Indian industrialist M. L. Lohia. It started off with the manufacture of polyester yarn but has now developed into a global player in PET resins and raw materials for the manufacture of PET for packaging and other applications as well as polyolefins (polyethylene and polypropylene). Its 2007 revenues are projected to be around US$ 1.8 billion. In 2006, Indorama commissioned the world’s largest single train plant for the manufacture of Purified Terephthalic Acid (PTA), the major raw material used in the manufacture of PET resins. In 2006, they also acquired Eleme Petrochemicals in Nigeria, with an annual capacity to produce 350,000 MT of polyethylene and polypropylene resins.