According to media reports, US private equity firm SK Capital Partners (New York; www.skcapitalpartners.com) is considering the divestment of Geon Performance Polymers (Westlake, Ohio; www.geon.com). The Bloomberg news agency has reported that the financial investor is currently exploring the possibility of a sale. Neither SK Capital nor Geon has responded to Plasteurope.com queries.

Such a rapid resale of an investment could be considered unusual. It was only mid-2019 when SK Capital paid USD 775 mn (EUR 700 mn) for the PVC unit for Performance Products & Solutions from US compounder and distributor PolyOne (see Plasteurope.com of 21.08.2019), a company now known as Avient (see Plasteurope.com of 02.07.2020).

Since then, the operations were named Geon and have been part of the SK Capital portfolio alongside well-known names such as Ascend (Houston, Texas; www.ascendmaterials.com) and Venator (Stockton-on-Tees, UK; www.venatorcorp.com).

Geon employs around 1,000 people at its 11 locations worldwide. The company announced last year that it intends to expand its compounding production with two lines for PVC base polymers, a move that was to boost capacity to 54,400 t/y and help reduce the company’s dependency on the car industry (see Plasteurope.com of 28.07.2021).

Most recently, Geon bought US family-run compounder Cary Compounds (Manalapan, New Jersey; https://carycompounds.com), which makes PVC products for the cable and pipe industry, in early June 2022.