Planned Acquisition by Arkema of Total’s Photocure and Coatings Resins

Arkema announces a project to acquire the Coatings Resins (Cray Valley and Cook Composite Polymers) and Photocure Resins (Sartomer) businesses of Total’s Specialty Chemicals activities for a €550M enterprise value. Fully in line with its strategy to bolster its specialty product activities, this project would establish Arkema as a leader in the global coatings resins market. It would further increase the downstream integration of its acrylics chain, while offering major potential for growth and synergies.

The businesses concerned by the project comprise the coatings resins (paints, adhesives, etc.) 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 €850M, and almost 1750 employees on some twenty sites around the world, these activities would enhance Arkema’s current position on these markets (emulsions, rheology additives, fluorinated polymers and copolymers, etc.).

With a wider product range (emulsions, photocure resins, rheology additives, alkyd resins, powder resins, fluorinated polymers and copolymers, etc.), Arkema would be in a position to serve its customers throughout the world as one of the world’s leading material suppliers to the coatings market.

By acquiring Sartomer, Arkema would become 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 (graphic arts, optics, electronics, etc.).

The combination of activities and technologies would speed up growth through major technical and commercial synergies.

In particular, this project would provide Arkema with new growth drivers in Asia. Arkema would indeed be able to draw on Cray Valley’s facilities in the region (India, Malaysia) and on the strong potential of Sartomer’s newly opened plant near Canton, China.

With dedicated R&D centers in Europe and in the U.S., Arkema would benefit from best-in-class innovation resources that would secure its competitive edge, in particular to develop new environmental friendly formulations.

This proposed 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%.

This acquisition would be part of the acquisition program representing some €1B of sales recently presented by the Group.

The project is subject to the mandatory information and consultation process involving personnel representatives from both the Arkema and the Total groups, as well as the approval of the antitrust authorities in the countries concerned. The deal should be closed in the first half of 2011.