A Plastics News Report
Mumbai, India -- Indian conglomerate Reliance Industries Ltd has boosted its offer for LyondellBasell Industries AF SCA, the world's largest polyolefins maker, according to published reports. But Rotterdam, Netherlands-based LyondellBasell may still reject the offer.
LyondellBasell first acknowledged Reliance's offer on 21 Nov, but the terms of its offers have never been officially disclosed. The Wall Street Journal and India's Business Standard on 8 Jan reported that the latest offer was for $13 500 million, up from $12 000 million. The stories quote unidentified sources.
The WSJ story said LyondellBasell would probably reject the offer, but that Reliance would have until February to make another offer.
Reliance - India's largest private company - has been linked to numerous plastics and petrochemical deals in recent years, including the sale of GE Plastics and the attempted sale of the commodity plastics business of Dow Chemical Co.
Reliance ranks as one of the world's largest polypropylene makers and rang up sales of about $29 000 million last year. LyondellBasell ranks as the largest maker of PP in both North America and the world. In North America, the firm also ranks second in markets for high and low density polyethylene.
In polyurethanes LyondellBasell is the world's largest producer of propylene oxide (PO), used to make polyols, propylene glycols and propylene glycol ethers for the polyurethanes sector. LyondellBasell has a total of 2100 kilotonnes-per-annum capacity for PO, from two plants in the US, three in Europe and a joint-venture plant in Japan.
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