French chemical group Atofina (F-92091 Paris; www.atofina.com) is to be dissolved as part of the restructuring of its corporate parent, oil and petrochemicals group Total (F-92069 Paris; www.total.fr). The former chlorochemicals and PVC, performance products (PA 11 and PA 12) and industrial chemicals/PMMA businesses of Atofina will be part of a newly created company to be known as Arkema, to be run by Thierry LeHenaff as CEO. French unions called a 24-hour strike on 4 October to protest the move.

Arkema will be divided into 14 units and will have overall sales of around EUR 5 bn with more than 19,000 employees. This makes it slightly smaller than the new Bayer chemicals and plastics spin-off Lanxess (www.lanxess.com). The petrochemicals activities separated out of Atofina will belong directly to Total in future. Until a planned stock split is completed, probably at the end of 2006, Arkema will operate as a separate company. Like Lanxess, the new French player also is targeting principally the Asian market for expansion. Sales there are planned to be doubled to around 20%.