M&G assets being sold off

Three producers of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) are buying up PET facilities owned by the bankrupt Italian company M&G Chemicals. A joint venture of the three firms—Indorama Ventures, Far Eastern New Century, and Alpek—has agreed to pay $1.125 billion to acquire an M&G plant under construction in Corpus Christi, Texas, that will produce PET and the raw material purified terephthalic acid (PTA). The facility will be the largest integrated PET-PTA plant in the world when it is complete, the partners say. They will each take one-third of its output. Separately, Indorama has agreed to buy M&G’s PET plant in Suape, Brazil, the country’s largest, for an undisclosed sum. Last month, Far Eastern won a bankruptcy court auction of M&G’s PET plant in Apple Grove, W.Va. M&G’s remaining PET plant is in Altamira, Mexico. A likely buyer is Alpek, which supplies the facility with PTA and recently helped arrange a loan to keep it running.