Swiss PU foam producer FoamPartner (Wolfhausen; www.foampartner.com) has sold its 51% share in joint venture Woodbridge FoamPartner (Chattanooga, Tennessee / USA; www.wfpfoam.com) to its jv partner, The Woodbridge Group (Mississauga, Ontario / Canada; www.woodbridgegroup.com). The sale has been backdated to 1 July 2017 and a delivery agreement concluded with the Canadian company. Parent company Conzzeta (Zurich / Switzerland; www.conzzeta.ch) has announced that this step will facilitate access to the North American market. FoamPartner will now be able to act in the North American market without any contractual restrictions.

Woodbridge FoamPartner was founded in 2006 and manufactures PU foams for the US market. On 21 July, Conzzeta had announced that it was going to tidy up its joint-venture structure in China against the background of the acquisition of the plastics business from Ottobock (see Plasteurope.com of 24.07.2017).

Conzzeta’s Chemical Specialties segment, which includes not only FoamPartner but also the manufacturer of printing varnishes and laminating adhesives Schmid Rhyner (Zurich; www.schmid-rhyner.ch), increased its year-on-year sales for the first half of 2017 by 3.2% to CHF 114.5m (EUR 106m), with the contribution from Woodbridge FoamPartner amounting to CHF 5.1m. The segment’s EBIT fell by around one-fifth to EUR 9.9m in a tight market with considerably higher raw material costs, since it was only able to adjust its own sales prices with a lag.