India's Himadri Chemicals eyes acquisition of Germany's Rutgers

18 May 2012 08:39  [Source: ICIS news]

KOLKATA (ICIS)--India’s Himadri Chemicals and Industries, the country’s largest integrated coal tar pitch distillates producer, is eyeing the acquisition of German firm Rutgers to gain a footprint in Europe, a senior company official said on Friday.

“Rutgers is now owned by a clutch of private equity investors who want an exit. A bidding process will be followed for this sale and we are waiting for the process to start to participate in it,” the official said.

“We have the support of good financial partners,” he added.

Financial institutions like Bain Capital, International Finance Corporation (IFC) and Germany’s DEG have picked up strategic investments in Himadri and the company had set aside a corpus of $400m (€316m) to fund its overseas acquisitions plans. However, the official declined to divulge details on its funding options.

This would be the second time that Himadri would be pitching for Rutgers, after a failed attempt in 2008 because of high valuations.

“We will have to carry out a fresh due diligence on Rutgers in order to update ourselves on the performance of the company over the last three years,” the official said.

The Dusseldorf-headquartered Rutgers, a leading coal tar pitch distillate producer with eight international production sites, is one of the main global competitors of Himadri and the acquisition would be a good fit for the Indian firm’s plans to increase its global market presence.

Himadri supplies east Asian markets from its 100,000 tonne/year coal tar pitch distillate plant in China’s Shandong province. The plant was commissioned in December 2011 and involved an investment of $40m.

The company has eight coal tar pitch distillate production plants across India. The company has plans to expand its installed capacity from 250,000 tonnes/year to 550,000 tonnes/year within the next 24 months, including a greenfield plant at Uttarakhand province in northern India.

($1 = €0.79)

Author: Ajoy Das

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