The Ems Group (CH-8704 Herrliberg; www.ems-group.com) has sold its systems engineering subsidiary Inventa-Fischer (CH-7130 Domat; www.inventa-fischer.com) with its locations in Domat/Ems (Switzerland) and Berlin to Uhde GmbH (D-44141 Dortmund; www.uhde.biz), a globally active engineering contractor with around 3,700 employees. The transaction, backdated to 1 January 2004, must still be approved by anti-trust authorities. No purchase price has been disclosed. Inventa-Fischer, a company with some160 employees and sales of EUR 58m (2003), plans and builds industrial production facilities for manmade fibres and plastics resins (in particular, PET bottle resins), using for the most part proprietary technology.

Uhde executive board member Klaus Schneiders said the acquisition will enable the engineering group – which belongs to ThyssenKrupp Technologies AG (D-45128 Essen; www.thyssenkrupp-tech.com) – to strategically increase its range of processes in the polymer field. The current Inventa-Fischer sites will continue to operate without any changes, and staff will be retained.

By shedding industrial plant engineering, Ems can concentrate more intensively on its core business of polymer materials, with its focus on high-temperature plastics to substitute metals, along with its custom adhesives activities. Ems claims to have invested more than CHF 120m (around EUR 78m) in this segment worldwide over the past five years, with more than CHF 100m going to the Swiss site at Domat. The final stage of the high-temperature polyamide facility was completed at the start of 2004. An additional pilot- and small-volume production facility for plastics came on stream in mid-April, and the new facilities in Taiwan and the US are to start producing this autumn.

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