As part of efforts to streamline its business, the longtime Delaware titan DuPont has agreed to sell a significant portion of its polymer and performance resin lines for $11 billion.
Celanese Corp., a Texas-based chemical and special materials company, is acquiring 80% of DuPont’s mobility and materials segment, including DuPont’s engineering polymers line and some products from its performance resins and advanced solutions lines.
DuPont intends to sell the rest of the mobility and materials segment in a separate deal.
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The company said last year it planned to sell the segment as part of its efforts to reshape DuPont as an electronics, electric vehicles and clean energy company. The announcement coincided with DuPont’s deal to acquire Rogers Corp., an Arizona-based company that develops wireless infrastructure, electric vehicle batteries and wind turbines, among other technologies.
“Our strategy is intentional and included strategic decisions to shift the company to higher-growth, higher-margin businesses with less cyclicality,” CEO Ed Breen said at the time.
Breen is best known as the architect behind the Dow-DuPont merger and subsequent breakup. He stepped down from his CEO role after the companies finalized the split in June 2019, but returned about a year later for a second stint as CEO.
The sale announced Friday continues a series of deals the company has made in recent years to move DuPont toward businesses it considers more consistent and better positioned for growth.
HISTORY: A DuPont timeline
Since 2015, DuPont has jettisoned its Teflon operations, its nutrition and bioscience division, its semiconductor business and its Pioneer seed brand. It’s also shed parts of its Delaware legacy, including its Stine-Haskell Research Center in Newark and its namesake hotel and country club in Wilmington.
In July, with Breen back at the controls, DuPont acquired Laird Performance Materials for $2.3 billion. DuPont folded Laird into its electronic and industrial segment, saying the acquisition would bolster the company’s efforts in “key industry megatrends,” such as artificial intelligence and smart and autonomous vehicles.
Four months later, it announced the Rogers deal with a $5.2 billion price tag. At the time of the announcement, the companies expected the deal to close in the second quarter of 2022.
The Celanese deal is expected to close at the end of the year. The product lines Celanese is acquiring generated a combined $3.5 billion in sales in 2021.
Contact Brandon Holveck at bholveck@delawareonline.com. Follow him on Twitter @holveck_brandon.
