Two and a half years after acquiring HT Troplast (Troisdorf / Germany; www.ht-troplast.com), private equity owners Carlyle Group (Dallas, Texas / USA; www.thecarlylegroup.com) and Advent International (Boston, Massachusetts / USA; www.adventinternational.com) have put the window profile specialist with sales of EUR 848m up for sale – see Plasteurope.com Web of 13.01.2005. Investment banks confirmed to Plasteurope.com that a consortium of Goldman Sachs and Lazard has invited interested parties to bid for the company acquired by Carlyle (55%) and Advent (45%) in early 2005 for a mooted EUR 300m.

HT Troplast is comprised mostly of PVC window profile specialist Profine (www.profine-group.com), owner of the trademarks "Kömmerling", "KBE" and "Trocal". Two of the group's other activities, polyolefin foam manufacturer Trocellen (www.trocellen.com) and Dynos, a producer of flexible abrasive discs made of vulcanised fibre, were sold to a Japanese strategic buyer and a private equity investor respectively.

Advent still owns PVC producer Vinnolit (Ismaning / Germany; www.vinnolit.com), which it acquired from Celanese and Wacker Chemie in 2000. Vinnolit was successfully refinanced in 2005, and in 2006 a major investment was made in upgrading production facilities (see Plasteurope.com Web of 22.11.2006) to make the company more attractive to potential buyers. Carlyle and Advent also have invested in Profine (see Plasteurope.com Web of 26.02.2007).