The European Commission has approved the sale of DuPont Nutrition & Health’s global alginates business to J. Rettenmaier & Söhne (JRS Group), a German manufacturer of functional additives from plant-based raw materials. Financial terms were not revealed.

The divestment was required by the antitrust regulator as part its conditional approval of DuPont’s acquisition of FMC’s Health & Nutrition business. DuPont and FMC agreed a swap deal last year, with DuPont taking FMC’s health and nutrition and FMC taking parts of DuPont’s crop protection assets.

The Commission was concerned that the transaction, as originally proposed, would have boosted FMC’s dominant position in alginates for use as pharmaceutical excipients and significantly reduced competition for food applications in Europe. Alginates are used as stabilising, thickening or gelling agents in food and drugs.

JRS will gain DuPont’s manufacturing plant in Landerneau, France, a license to use the Grinsted alginate brand name for a certain (undisclosed) period of time, as well as the US group’s pure and buffered alginates and a specific portfolio of pectin-alginate blends.

The transaction, which is expected to close in the third quarter of 2018, is the first in more than three years for JRS. In December 2014, the Rosenberg-headquartered company paid $37.5 million for SunOpta’s fiber and starch business. The acquisition included operations in the US, at Louisville, Kentucky; Cedar Rapids, Iowa; Cambridge and Fosston, Minnesota; and Galesburg, Illinois.