Alumina Maker Almatis Changes Hands Again

The specialty alumina maker Almatis has been sold by its owners, Rh??ne Capital and the Ontario Teachers??? Pension Plan (OTPP), to Dubai International Capital (DIC), an investment firm owned by the Dubai government.

Details of the sale weren???t disclosed, but reports from Germany, where Almatis is based, put the sale price at $1.2 billion. Almatis is the former specialty chemicals business of Alcoa, which sold the business to Rh??ne and OTPP in 2004 for about $340 million.

Rhône and OTPP announced a deal to sell the business to the private equity firm Investcorp in September 2005, but that agreement fell through.

Almatis has annual sales of more than $500 million, a spokesman says, up from $360 million at the time of the sale by Alcoa. CEO Martin Laudenbach, who joined the company in January from BASF, says DIC is committed to Almatis??? growth strategy. The firm is in the midst of an expansion program that it says will raise its global capacity by almost 20% to around 750,000 tons by 2010.