Skip to main content

Solenis to acquire Diversey

8th March 2023

Submitted by:

Andrew Warmington

Speciality chemicals manufacturer Solenis has agreed to buy cleaning, infection prevention and hygiene giant Diversey. The $4.6 billion all-cash deal should be completed in 2H, subject to approval by Diversey shareholders, and will remove Diversey from public ownership. Both boards have backed it.

“In combining these two fully complementary businesses, we expect to usher in a new and exciting chapter in our long history of helping customers tackle core challenges such as water and energy management, partnering on sustainability issues to work towards a cleaner, safer world and reducing environmental impact,” said Solenis CEO John Panichella, who will lead the combined entity following transition and integration.

Platinum Equity-owned Solenis will pay $7.84/share to Diversey’s main owner, Bain Capital, which will roll over 56% of its stake into an affiliate of Solenis and sell the remainder to Solenis at the same price. Other shareholders will receive $8.40/share, which represents a 41% premium on the closing share price on 7 March, the last full trading day prior to the announcement.

This opens up new markets for Solenis, which focuses on the water-intensive industries such as pulp, packaging paper and board, tissue and towel, oil and gas, petroleum refining, chemical processing, mineral processing, biorefining, power, municipal, and pool and spa. It currently employs about 6,500 in 130 countries, compared to Diversey’s 9,000 in 80.

Solenis itself is the result of multiple mergers, beginning when private equity investor Clayton, Dubilier & Rice acquired the water treatment business of Ashland in 2014. The firm merged with BASF’s paper-wet-end and water-chemicals business in 2019. Two years later, Platinum Equity acquired Solenis and merging it into its existing water treatment subsidiary Sigura to create a player with $3.5 billion/year in sales.

Since then, the firm has made five bolt-on acquisitions. Most recently, in early February, it completed those of acquire the paper process chemicals business of Kolb Distribution, a unit of KLK Kolb, and Lima-based Grand Invest Group. None,  however, was remotely as big as the deal with Diversey.

Feature article – Saltigo rides out the cycle

Market and sustainability trends are positive drivers for Saltigo, despite the agro downturn. Andrew Warmington met up with the new CEO at Chemspec Europe

Submitted by:

Andrew Warmington

UPL to split out specialities

Indian agrochemicals giant UPL has announced plans to transfer its speciality chemicals business, including agrochemical active ingredient (AI) manufacturing to its wholly owned subsidiary UPL Spec

Submitted by:

Andrew Warmington

Nippon Shokubai opens Indonesian plant

Japan’s Nippon Shokubai has officially opened a 100,000 tonnes/year acrylic acid (AA) plant that was built at a cost of about $200 million at Cilegon, Banten, Indonesia.

Submitted by:

Andrew Warmington

CABB to invest at Finnish agro site

The CABB Group has said that it will invest over €50 million by 2025 to expand facilities at its agrochemical manufacturing site in Kokkola, Finland.

Submitted by:

Andrew Warmington

AI for SAPs

Together with Algo Artis, Japan’s Nippon Shokubai has developed an algorithm-based means for the production planning of superabsorbent polymers (SAPs) based on acrylic acid, and has started operati

Submitted by:

Andrew Warmington

Halozyme has dropped its approach to buy Evotec

Halozyme abandons Evotec bid

San Diego-based biopharmaceutical company Halozyme Therapeutics has withdrawn the offer it made for Evotec after a week after the latter declined to engage with it.

Submitted by:

Andrew Warmington

adcs

Three invest further into ADCs

Three CDMOs have separately announced expansions in their antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) manufacturing capabilities and capacity on opposite sides of the Atlantic.

Submitted by:

Andrew Warmington

Cambrex exits drug product

CDMO Cambrex has sold its Drug Product business unit to Noramco. Terms were not disclosed.

Submitted by:

Andrew Warmington

Siegfried breaks ground on R&D centre

Siegfried has broke ground for its new global R&D centre for drug substances at its site in Evionnaz, Switzerland.

Submitted by:

Andrew Warmington

Drug product centre opens

Following two years of construction work, CDMO Siegfried has officially opened its new development centre for drug products at its sites in Barberà del Vallès and El Masnou near Barcelona.

Submitted by:

Andrew Warmington

First waste-based biosurfactants

Belgian start-up AmphiStar has launched what it claims are the first fully upcycled biobased surfactants under the trade names AmphiCare and AmphiClean.

Submitted by:

Andrew Warmington

Aether to supply Seqens

Indian firm Aether Industries has entered into a manufacturing agreement with Chemoxy International, a UK-based subsidiary of Seqens.

Submitted by:

Andrew Warmington

New model for biocatalysts

BASF, the Austrian Research Centre of Industrial Biotechnology (ACIB) and the University of Graz in Austria have co-developed a computer-assisted regression model to improve enzyme performance and

Submitted by:

Andrew Warmington

CBE JU funds 31 more projects

The Circular Bio-based Europe Joint Undertaking (CBE JU), a €2 billion partnership between the EU and the Bio-based Industries Consortium (BIC) that funds projects advancing competitive circular bi

Submitted by:

Andrew Warmington

Investment in Tanasote plant

Octowood, a part of the Sweden’s Rundvirke Industrier Group, has invested in a new treatment plant using Arxada’s wood preservative, Tanasote.

Submitted by:

Andrew Warmington

Rhamnolipid milestone reached

Evonik has manufactured the first product from its industrial-scale biosurfactants facility at Slovenská Lupca in Slovakia.

Submitted by:

Andrew Warmington

Sudarshan to buy Heubach

India’s Sudarshan Chemical Industries (SCIL) has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire the Heubach Group in a move that it said would “create a global pigment company, combining SCIL’s ope

Submitted by:

Andrew Warmington

Lanxess to continue pigment production

Lanxess has reversed a decision to sell the chromium oxide pigments business at the Krefeld-Uerdingen site in Germany, preserving 50 jobs there.

Submitted by:

Andrew Warmington

Alliance in natural fragrances

Sensegen, a US-based specialist in biotech-enabled fragrances, notably a new class of natural musk raw materials, has announced a strategic collaboration with Japan’s Takasago, a large player in th

Submitted by:

Andrew Warmington

Croda breaks ground in China

Croda International has broken ground for a low-carbon, multi-purpose production facility on a greenfield site in Guangzhou. This triples its manufacturing capacity for fragrances and establis

Submitted by:

Andrew Warmington

CCT collaboration for Givaudan

Flavours and fragrances giant Givaudan has agreed a research collaboration for the development of sustainable fragrance ingredients from renewable carbon, with US-based LanzaTech, which describes i

Submitted by:

Andrew Warmington

Kao boosts jasmine fragrance

Japan's Kao Corporation is to double capacity for the synthetic fragrance methyl dihydrojasmonate (MDJ) at its site in Olesa, Spain, by adding a second production facility.

Submitted by:

Andrew Warmington

Merck KGaA “in a strong strategic position”

At its latest Capital Markets Day, Merck KGaA said that it is “in a strong strategic position” to profit from medium-term growth opportunities in all three of its business sectors after a transitio

Submitted by:

Andrew Warmington

Suez joins Global Impact Coalition

Suez, which describes itself as “a global leader in circular solutions for water and waste”, has joined the Global Impact Coalition (GIC).

Submitted by:

Andrew Warmington

Chemours opens battery lab

Chemours has opened Chemours Battery Innovation Centre (CBIC) at the Chemours Discovery Hub in Newark, Delaware.

Submitted by:

Andrew Warmington