The roller coaster ride of the past two years has ended for German plastics machinery manufacturing group Mannesmann Plastics Machinery (MPM, D-80997 Munich; www.mannesmann-plastics.com). At least for now. The Siemens group (D-80333 Munich; www.siemens.com) has agreed to sell the majority of this business, formerly part of Atecs Mannesmann, along several other industrial subsidiaries for EUR 1.69 bn to New York-based US financial investor Kohlberg Kravis Roberts (www.kkr.com). The companies will be brought into a newly created Luxembourg- based Holding, in which KKR will have 81% and Siemens 19%.

The MPM group, which includes injection moulding specialists Krauss-Maffei Plastics Machinery (www.krauss-maffei.de), Demag ergotech (www.demag-ergotech.com), Netstal (www.netstal.com), Billion (www.billion.fr) and Van Dorn (www.vandorn.com), along with extrusion machinery manufacturer Berstorff (www.berstorff.de), employs around 6,400 people and has annual sales of some EUR 1.2 bn (2001). Plans to sell the machinery group to Apax Capital Partners (www.apax.com) collapsed in October 2001 (see Plasteurope.com 22, 2001).