Royal DSM today announced the sale of its resins and functional materials businesses to German company Covestro for €1.6 billion in equity.
The move, which is subject to approvals which are expected before July 2021, comes in the wake of DSM having hit the acquisition trail.
The resins and functional materials units contributed €133 million to DSM's €1.82 billion gross earnings last year and the sale is expected to bank DSM a net €1.4 billion.
The proposed acquisition will see Covestro acquire products including DSM's anti-reflective and anti-soiling solar glass coatings plus an aftermarket coating launched last year for solar modules already in the field.
“The deal delivers strong value to DSM and is strategically attractive for all parties,” said Royal DSM joint chief executive Geraldine Matchett. “In Covestro, we recognize a company that shares similar views on culture and the value of sustainability. We know that Covestro will be a good owner of these businesses.”
Backsheet focus
The DSM Advanced Solar business unit will now focus entirely on backsheets. The company moved into the field in 2017 with the acquisition of Chinese supplier Sunshine New Materials Technology and currently offers two products – the polymer-based ‘Endurance’ backsheet and a conductive product for high-efficiency, back-contact modules.
“The backsheet business remains as a growth business for DSM,” said Annet Hoek, global marketing communications manager at DSM Advanced Solar. She told pv magazine: “We are now beginning to realize the investments we have done in recent years in both our Endurance backsheet business as well as the conductive backsheet business. We already offer award-winning performance and our pipeline of innovation is strong.”
This content is protected by copyright and may not be reused. If you want to cooperate with us and would like to reuse some of our content, please contact: editors@pv-magazine.com.
By submitting this form you agree to pv magazine using your data for the purposes of publishing your comment.
Your personal data will only be disclosed or otherwise transmitted to third parties for the purposes of spam filtering or if this is necessary for technical maintenance of the website. Any other transfer to third parties will not take place unless this is justified on the basis of applicable data protection regulations or if pv magazine is legally obliged to do so.
You may revoke this consent at any time with effect for the future, in which case your personal data will be deleted immediately. Otherwise, your data will be deleted if pv magazine has processed your request or the purpose of data storage is fulfilled.
Further information on data privacy can be found in our Data Protection Policy.