BASF Australia to sell plastics compounding plant to Marplex

22 April 2002 01:57  [Source: ICIS news]

SINGAPORE (CNI)--BASF Australia is to sell its compounding plant for engineering plastics in Melbourne to Engineering Polymers Pty Ltd, a subsidiary of Marplex Australia, BASF's distributor in Australia and New Zealand. The selling price of the plant was not immediately available.

Effective from 1 June 2002, Engineering Polymers, owned by four Marplex directors, will manufacture local grades based on a BASF license.

The new company is strictly a manufacturing operation and will not engage in selling products to the industry.

BASF said the agreement was in line with the company's worldwide strategy of concentrating on establishing and operating world-scale plants.

For the plastics business, this means manufacturing large volume products to serve global and regional markets as well as licensing other companies to compound low volume special grades to meet the demands of local markets.

Marplex has been an integral part of the Australian plastics industry since 1968. It established its own compounding operations in the 1980s, broadening its range into engineering thermoplastics after teaming up with Mitsubishi.

More than half of the products Marplex currently markets were developed in its own laboratories. The establishment of further alliances has taken Marplex into polyethylene terephthalate (PET), polyvinyl chloride (PVC), polypropylene (PP) and polyphenylene ether (PPE).

By: James Dallmeyer
+65 6780 4359

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