AGC buys 58.77-per-cent stake in Vinythai
Japan's AGC Asahi Glass (AGC) has completed the acquisition of a 58.77-per-cent equity stake in Vinythai Public Company Limited, a chlor-alkali producer in Southeast Asia and Thailand’s second largest manufacturer of PVC resins. The cost of the acquisition was Bt10.448 billion.
Becoming a major shareholder of Vinythai Plc, the AGC Group intends to drive business growth in Southeast Asia. With production bases in Indonesia, Vietnam and Thailand, the AGC Group is now the largest supplier of chlor-alkali products in Southeast Asia, operating integrated production facilities from caustic soda and chlorine to PVC.
The group’s production capacity of each product is listed as: PVC will be 980 kilo metric tons (Kmt) a year; caustic soda will be more than 1,400Kmt a year; and VCM will be over 1,200Kmt a year.
Both the PVC and caustic soda markets in Southeast Asia are expected to grow by about 5 per cent per year, due to an increase in demand driven by the region’s economic development.
Besides chlor-alkali products, 100-per-cent bio-based epichlorohydrin, branded as Epicerol, is an emerging biochemical product. The production capacity is 100Kmt a year.
The group’s mid-term target for 2017 is to achieve 100 billion yen (Bt33.33 billion) of operating profit.