Creditors to Buy M&G’s Texas PET Plant

Creditors of insolvent Italian plastics producer M&G Group (formerly Mossi & Ghisolfi) have teamed up to buy the mammoth PTA and PET plant the company’s subsidiary M&G Polymers USA was building at Corpus Christi, Texas, before it ran into problems and out of money.

The buyers, Thailand-based global PET market leader Indorama Ventures, Taiwan’s Far Eastern New Century Corporation (FENC) and Mexico’s Alpek, have formed a joint venture, CC Polymers, to take over the insolvent group’s remaining asset. The deal, subject to approval by a US bankruptcy court in the state of Delaware and applicable governmental authorities, includes related intellectual property.

The consortium has launched a binding bid of $1.1 billion in cash and other capital contributions to buy the complex, which is capable of producing 1.3m t/y of PTA and 1.1m t/y of PET and expected to be the world’s largest single-line vertically integrated PTA-PET production line and the largest PTA plant in the Americas. 

Each of the three buyers will have the right to take a third of the PTA and PET produced at Corpus Christi. A timeline for completion of the project – originally due on stream in 2016 – will be announced at a later date. Each of the companies will independently procure its own raw materials as well as independently selling and distributing its share of the output.

Indorama, reportedly M&G’s largest unsecured creditor, is believed to be owed  $56.6million. The Thai group recently acquired the 550,000 t/y PET plant of M&G Polimeros Brasil for an undisclosed sum. The facility is Brazil’s biggest. Far Eastern has paid $3.5 million to acquire M&G’s 360,000 t/y PET plant at Apple Grove, West Virginia, while Alpek has pledged to provide up to $60m in secured financing to support M&G’s Mexican operations pending approval of a restructuring plan.