The Lubrizol Corporation announced that it has acquired Nalco Performance Products Group, a supplier of value-added specialty polymers and formulation additives marketed to the global personal care and household care industries.
This acquisition, structured as an asset sale, will expand the strategic portfolio of Lubrizol’s Noveon Consumer Specialties Home and Personal Care product line. For the 12 months ended December 2010, estimated sales of the Nalco personal care business are $45 million. The deal closed on January 21, 2011.
Headquartered in Naperville, IL, Nalco’s personal care product portfolio includes performance polymers sold under globally recognized brand names, including:
• Merquat Conditioning Polymers
• Sensomer Naturally Derived Conditioning Polymers
• Fixomer Styling Polymers
• Solamer UV Absorbers
• Merguard Preservatives
These specialty ingredients are used by leading multinational cosmetic and consumer product companies to improve the performance of hair, skin and home care products consumers use on a daily basis.
The Noveon Consumer Specialties product portfolio includes rheology modifiers and thickeners, fixative polymers, specialty surfactants, emollient esters, unique sensory modifiers and cationic cassia conditioning polymers. Its claims-driving and enabling ingredients, including the industry leading brand Carbopol polymers, are designed to provide product formulators with a strong range of technologies that enhance the visual and tactile appeal, functional performance and convenience of fast-moving consumer goods.
“The joining of our two personal care product lines creates a portfolio of industry-leading technologies that will help make our combined customers more successful through expanded access to innovative ingredients, formulations and applications knowledge,” commented Eric Schnur, president of Lubrizol Advanced Materials. “This is another example of how the company continues to invest in our personal and home care business, increasing our product innovation capabilities, our global infrastructure and our talent base.”
While the Nalco personal care business has achieved consistent growth in sales and earnings over the past eight years, the company decided to exit the personal care and household care business in order to focus on its core industrial water, energy and air applications business.
“Our personal care business is more product oriented than service oriented and not a strategic fit with our emphasis on providing sustainability services for industrial water, energy and air applications,” said Nalco chairman and chief executive officer J. Erik Fyrwald. “Lubrizol is a well respected industry leader with a strong commitment to the personal care industry, which is more of an advantage for that business. This sale allows Nalco to more closely concentrate on the industrial and institutional markets that are the core of our business.”
The agreement includes all Nalco personal care dedicated technology, know-how, application knowledge, intellectual property, trade names, customer lists and relationships, and base business, as well as royalty-free access to the use of technology and intellectual property currently shared with other Nalco businesses. With this acquisition, Lubrizol will be assuming approximately 15 full-time employees, and it is expected that all Nalco personal care products will be transitioned to Lubrizol over the next six months. The Nalco personal care brand names will be retained and unified under the Noveon Consumer Specialties product line.
The acquisition will be accretive in the first year.
