Two additional bidders – an unidentified Swiss fund and Industrie Generali (Samarate / Italy; www.industriegenerali.it) – have joined the list of those potentially interested in acquiring all or parts of Vinyls Italia (HQ: Porto Marghera), according to the Ministry for Economic Development in Rome. The ministry’s tender offer for the former Ineos subsidiary expired on 22 October – see Plasteurope.com of 09.09.2010. Previously, Croatia’s Dioki (Zagreb; www.dioki.hr) had expressed interest in the production facilities at Porto Torres and Ravenna, but not Porto Marghera. The ministry said it received altogether four bids, but rejected one of them outright. It did not disclose details of any of the offers.

Italian reports speculate that Qatar-based building contractor Ramco Trading & Contracting (Dohar; www.ramcoeng.com) may be re-entering negotiations, through the back door as it were, as one of the companies or the only company represented by the Swiss fund. In June, Ramco backed away from a deal, due reportedly to a dispute with state-controlled oil and gas producer Eni (Rome / Italy; www.eni.it), which controls the crucial feedstocks for vinyls production in the country’s chemical industry. The latest rumours suggest that the fund could take over some of the feedstock units from the energy giant.

Wholly family-owned Industrie Generali, a distributor of polyolefins and PVC as well as a manufacturer of plastics machinery and equipment – primarily for PVC – repurchased the EUR 22m vinyl compounding activities of Arkema (Paris; www.arkema.com) at Vanzaghello / Italy in March 2009, as the French chemical producer refocused on high-tech, in particular medical, applications. The facilities previously had been sold by the Italian company to Arkema predecssor Elf Atochem – see Plasteurope.com of 31.01.1998. Arkema retained the site at Samarate, where it continues to produce.