Shell Chemicals (GB-London SE1 7NA) plans to sell its “Kraton” TPE business to the US private equity fund Ripplewood Holdings L.L.C (712 Fifth Avenue, 49th floor, New York, NY 10019 /USA). With the sale of the business that has annual sales of USD 600m, Shell will complete its withdrawal from the downstream plastics business begun in October 1998. The Kraton range of thermoplastic elastomers, launched by Shell in 1998, meanwhile have found their way into a variety of applications. Ripplewood Holdings by its own account oversees business with equity of USD 2.7bn, scattered across a number of sectors including automobile retail sales, food, technology, chemical and other manufacturing sectors, as well as continuing education. Kraton is expected to be the seed for the development of a specialised Ripplewood chemicals portfolio.

Over the past two years, Shell has shed a number of plastics businesses, including Rovin, the joint venture with Akzo Nobel (to Shin-Etsu), the French PVC production facilities in France (to Atofina and Solvay) and PVC converter Wavin (to CVC). Polystyrene production activities were sold to Canada´s Nova Chemicals, EPS processing to the company´s management and polyurethane foam production to that segment´s management. Dow acquired the rubber activities, Italy´s Mossi & Ghisolfi the PET business. Production of the “Carillon” high performance polymer was shut down. It also looks certain that the epoxy resin activities will go to venture capital interests.

Shell´s only remaining engagement in plastics production is Basell, the new mega joint venture with BASF, which takes in the UK group´s PE (Elenac) and PP businesses (Montell).