The European Commission has approved, under the EU Merger Regulation, the proposed acquisition of Solvay’s nylon business assets (the “Divestment Business”) by Domo Chemicals GmbH (“Domo”).
The Divestment Business is being divested in the context of the Commission’s conditional clearance in January 2019 of the acquisition of Solvay’s EP and P&I business by BASF (M.8674). The Divestment Business is primarily involved in the nylon 6.6 value chain and focuses on the manufacturing of nylon intermediates and final products.
Domo is a vertically integrated firm, which offers a portfolio of nylon intermediates and final products focusing on the nylon 6 value chain, fertilizers and petrochemical products.
The nylon 6 value chain and the nylon 6.6 value chain are different in respect of the feedstock, intermediates and final products involved. Therefore, the products of the Divestment Business and Domo are largely complementary.
The Commission concluded that the proposed transaction would raise no competition concerns, given the small horizontal overlap between the companies’ activities in the market for nylon 6.6 engineering plastics and the minor vertical relationships for the production of non-oriented cast nylon 6 films. More information is available on the Commission’s competition website https://ec.europa.eu/competition /index_en.html