Basell gives its PP capacity a boost
Basell USA and ConocoPhillips have signed an agreement under which Basell will be the exclusive purchaser and marketer of the PP resins produced at ConocoPhillips’ new Bayway plant at Linden, New Jersey. The £775M pounds-per-year plant is scheduled to start up early next year.

Basell, a 50/50 joint venture of BASF and Royal Dutch/Shell, is the world’s largest producer and marketer of PP. The addition of the Bayway plant capacity will increase the PP capacity Basell sells in North America to more than 4bn pounds per year.

Rexam boosts German glass container market
Rexam is to acquire Nienburger Glas which has four sites across Germany and employs 1270 people. The transaction, which is supported by a supply agreement with Interbrew, is subject to regulatory approval. The £68M deal includes net borrowings and is subject to net asset and other adjustments. Rexam, which will assume £8M of pension liabilities, will finance the acquisition through existing committed borrowing facilities.

It is anticipated that the acquisition will exceed Rexam’s cost of capital within the first full year of ownership and will provide some £3M of synergies in the following two years.

Commenting on the deal, Rexam’s chief executive Rolf Börjesson said: “We have consistently stated that the German glass industry needs consolidating and that Rexam could take the opportunity to play a role as a consolidator.

“The integration of our glass operations with Nienburger’s will create cost-saving synergies and also reinforce our long term relationship with Interbrew, one of our principal beverage customers.”

Fischer & Krecke snaps up Germany’s Icoma
The Fischer & Krecke Group has snapped up Korsnas Paper Group’s German-based engineering business Icoma FBS. Now Icoma products will be marketed through the Fischer & Krecke company Kochsiek.

Icoma, of course, makes a range of machinery for the production, transportation, and filling of paper sacks and bags, including automatic palletisers. These products complement the Kochsiek machinery that is used to make sacks from paper reels.

The Group is represented in the UK and Ireland by Edlon Machinery.

M&G steals an interest in the boys from Brazil
The M&G Group lifted Rhodia’s equity interests in Rhodia-ster SA of Brazil.

The acquisition includes a 200kt PET resin plant, a 18kt PET recycling plant (Recipet SA), 90kt of PE (two sites) and a majority ownership of Rhodiaco Indústrias Químicas which operates a 225kt PTA plant.

M&G will now, as required by recent legislation in Brazil, make a comparable offer to purchase the outstanding shares in Rhodia-ster from the minority shareholders.