French chemicals major Total (Courbevoie; www.total.com) plans to divest its entire composite activities by selling off CCP Composites (Courbevoie / France; www.ccpcomposites.com). Italian competitor Polynt (Scanzorosciate; www.polynt.it) has made a binding offer through its wholly owned American subsidiary, PCCR USA (Carpentersville, Illinois; www.pccrusa.com). No financial details have been made public and the transaction is subject to the approval of the respective antitrust authorities.

"The deal would give us a horizontal and vertical integration in the production of resins and composites," notes Polynt CEO Rosario Valido. According to Patrick Pouyanné, president of Total’s Refining & Chemicals division, the acquisition would make the northern Italian company the European leader and the world’s third-largest producer on the composites market.

Located just outside the city of Bergamo, Polynt’s parent company is holding group Polimeri Speciali Srl (Milan), which is owned by the family-run Italian investment fund Investindustrial. The company has 1,500 employees working in 13 production facilities in Europe, China and the US. The company has a focus on unsaturated polyester resins and derivatives such as BMC/SMC and plasticisers with backward integration for feedstocks maleic anhydryde and phthalic anhydryde. In 2013 the company recorded revenues totalling EUR 632.5m.

CCP Composites was established in October 2011 following the merger involving American resin producer Cook Composites and Polymers (CCP, Kansas City, Missouri; www.ccpcompositesus.com) and France’s Cray Valley (Paris; www.crayvalley.com) along with the in the meantime divested North American distributor Composites One (Arlington Heights, Illinois; www.compositesone.com) – all of them Total subsidiaries. Revenues in 2013 were roughly USD 560m with the company counting 800 employees in 26 global locations.