Speciality chemicals and catalyst expert W. R. Grace (Columbia, Maryland / USA; www.grace.com) has grabbed a another fish out of the pond. For around USD 416m (EUR 350 m), Albemarle (Baton Rouge, Louisiana / USA; www.albemarle.com) is selling its polyolefin catalyst business to Grace. Albemarle is keeping the organometallics and curatives that also form part of this business.

Under the terms of the transaction, Grace will be taking over the US product development centre in Baton Rouge, as well as operations at Yeosu / South Korea. The sale is expected to close by the end of the first quarter of 2018.

W. R. Grace, with its Catalysts Technologies and Materials Technologies divisions, has been buying up large swathes of polyolefin catalyst activity worldwide. Its most recent transaction was the acquisition of the corresponding business from BASF (Ludwigshafen / Germany; www.basf.com) in 2016 – see Plasteurope.com of 07.07.2016.

Prior to this, Grace acquired the PP licence and catalyst business of Dow Chemical (Midland, Michigan / USA; www.dow.com – see Plasteurope.com of 06.12.2013). In 2012 and 2010, the company took over Chinese competitor Noblestar Catalysts (Qingdao, Shandong; www.noblestar.com.cn – see Plasteurope.com of 04.12.2012) and Borealis supplier Synthetech (Albany, Oregon / USA – see Plasteurope.com of 25.11.2010), respectively.

The biggest coup could, however, still be forthcoming. Analysts claim that W. R. Grace is showing a pronounced interest in the technology division of plant manufacturer CB&I (The Hague / The Netherlands; www.cbi.com), which has been up for sale since the autumn. This would be attractive not only in terms of the petrochemicals business, but also on account of the strong link it enjoys with speciality chemical group Clariant (Muttenz / Switzerland; www.clariant.com), which has been under pressure since the collapse of its deal with Huntsman (The Woodlands, Texas / USA; www.huntsman.com).