Ineos Will Acquire Tessenderlo’s PVC Unit

Ineos ChlorVinyls is buying Tessenderlo’s chlor-alkali and polyvinyl chloride business for $155 million. Ineos will gain about 850 employees with the purchase, which includes plants in Tessenderlo, Belgium; Mazingarbe, France; and Beek and Maastricht, the Netherlands. The business lost $14 million in 2010 on $821 million in sales. Tessenderlo is taking a charge of $225 million related to the sale and now plans to focus on more specialized operations such as plastic pipe, gelatin, and sulfate fertilizers. The pipe business plans to buy PVC from Ineos under contract. Ineos Chlor­Vinyls has annual revenues of about $2.7 billion.