Cinven beats Ineos to buy MBCC Admixtures

Private equity firm Cinven has snatched a last-minute deal to buy MBCC Admixtures, part of BASF’s former construction chemicals group, from the Swiss company Sika.

As recently as Jan. 16, chemical giant Ineos had announced that it was acquiring MBCC Admixtures.

Since then, however, the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) indicated that it had concerns that such an agreement would adversely affect the competitiveness of the UK construction chemicals sector. So Sika turned to Cinven.

MBCC Admixtures has annual sales of about $1 billion and more than 1,600 staff at 35 production sites across Australia, Canada, Europe, New Zealand, and the US. Headquartered in Mannheim, Germany, MBCC Admixtures provides a broad range of products that are used in the construction industry, including materials that reduce the carbon dioxide emissions in the production of concrete.

Sika’s sale of MBCC Admixtures has itself been triggered by the CMA. If the business is not sold, the UK authority will not approve Sika’s $5.9 billion acquisition of the larger MBCC Group from investment firm Lone Star Funds. Sika has been waiting since Nov. 2021 to close this bigger deal.

Cinven has extensive knowledge of the concrete admixtures sector having previously owned construction chemicals business Chryso which had sales of about $400 million and had 1,300 staff. Cinven sold the Chryso business in 2021 to French construction chemicals firm Saint-Gobain. Cinven is hopeful that it can gain regulatory approval to acquire MBCC Admixtures in the first half of this year.