The story
Arkema was created when French oil major Total restructured its chemicals business in 2004, but the company's roots go back many years.
Origin and evolution
In 1971, Elf and Total merged their chemical operations into Aquitaine Total Organico (ATO), a joint subsidiary. The same year saw the creation of Produits Chimiques Ugine Kuhlmann (PCUK). The joint venture was renamed ATO Chimie in 1973. A second company, Chloé Chimie (40% Elf Aquitaine, 40% Total and 20% Rhône-Poulenc) was formed in 1980 to take over Rhône-Poulenc's chlorochemicals business. Three years later, Total sold its stake in Chloé Chimie to Elf and chemical production in France was reorganized around Atochem, a wholly owned Elf Aquitaine subsidiary that incorporated the activities of ATO Chimie, Chloé Chimie and most of PCUK.
In 1989, Elf Aquitaine acquired the Pennwalt Corporation and, along with M&T Chemicals and Atochem Inc., formed Atochem North America Inc. Pennwalt can trace its roots to the formation of The Pennsylvania Salt Manufacturing Co. by five Philadelphia Quakers in 1850. The Pennsylvania Salt Manufacturing Co. changed its name to Pennsalt Chemicals Corp in 1957 and merged with Wallace and Tiernan Inc. to form Pennwalt Corp in 1969.
The year 1990 saw another reorganization of chemical production in France. Orkem's petrochemicals, styrenics, fertilizers and acrylics businesses were integrated into Atochem, while specialties (resin and paint) moved to Total. Montedison's organic peroxide business was acquired. Atochem was renamed Elf Atochem in 1992 and merged with Total's chemical businesses into Atofina a year after the takeover of Elf by TotalFina in 1999.
Formation, independence and listing
In February 2004, Total, the French-based multinational oil conglomerate announced a reorganisation of its chemicals business. A new company under Total's ownership, named Arkema, was formed on 1 October into which Total placed certain assets held by its Atofina subsidiary, which was then dissolved. The kem part of Arkema's name references the company as a chemicals producer. Arkema was structured into three divisions producing vinyl products (chlorochemicals and PVC, vinyl compounds and pipes and profiles), industrial chemicals (acrylics, fluorochemicals, hydrogen peroxide, PMMA and thiochemicals) and performance products (additives, organic peroxides, agrochemicals and urea-formaldehyde resins).
Total's intention to spin off Arkema into an independent listed company was achieved on 18 May 2006 when Arkema debuted on the Paris stock market. In June 2011, Arkema joined the CAC Next 20 French stock market index.
Acquisitions, disposals and reconfigurations
2007: Arkema sells its agrochemical business (Cerexagri) to United Phosphorus and its urea-formaldehyde activities to Hexion.
2007: Acquires Coatex company (specialty acrylic polymers)
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2010: Acquires acrylic Dow assets in the US
2011: Acquires Total coating resins (Cray Valley and Sartomer)
2012: acquires Chinese Company Hipro Polymers (producer of bio-Polyamides) and Casda Biomaterials (producer of plant raw materials)
In July 2012, Arkema sold for 1 symbolic euro its vinyl products business segment to the Klesch group for reasons of profitability, but also to re-center its operations exclusively on specialty chemicals. As part of this divestment, Arkema made a 100 million euro cash payment to the Klesch group and took on debts amounting to 470 million euros to help revive the activity. In response to fears of redundancy and to protests from employees at a number of production sites, the trade unions negotiated, with the Arkema management, industrial and social guarantees as well as support measures designed to protect the rights of employees should the Klesch group implement redundancies following their take-over of the vinyl products activities. Hence two trust funds of €20 M were set up to secure compensation payments and the rights of employees of the companies that were sold off. Following the sale, Arkema reorganized its activities into three business segments: High Performance Materials, Industrial Specialties and Coating Solutions. Each represented about one third of Group turnover.
2015: Purchase of Bostik from Total S.A. The company also joined CJ Group of South Korea to invest in the manufacture of L-methionine in Malaysia.
2020: Plexiglas business sold to the American group Trinseo for $1.1 billion.
2021: Acquisition of Ashland's Performance Adhesives business for $1.65 billion.
2022: Acquisition of Permoseal, an adhesives producer based in South Africa.
2023: acquisition of a controlling stake in PI Advanced Materials (PIAM), which makes polyimide films for flexible printed circuit boards and graphite sheets used in mobile devices and electric vehicles.
2024: acquisition of a majority stake of nearly 78% in Proionic, a start-up business in the production and development of ionic liquids, used in lithium-ion batteries.
2024: acquisition of Dow’s flexible packaging laminating adhesives business.
2025: Arkema announced a 17 million euro investment to build a new transparent polyamide plant in Singapore.
From Wikipedia’s article on Arkema, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.7