May 12 2004
MG Technologies AG is selling Dynamit Nobel Kunststoff GmbH (DNK) to U.S. automotive supplier Flex-N-Gate Corporation, which is headquartered in Urbana, Illinois. The disposal is based on an enterprise value of around €430 million, including all liabilities to be assumed by the purchaser. MG´s Supervisory Board has approved the transaction today. The company is due to be transferred in the third quarter of 2004, subject to the consent of MG's Annual Shareholders' Meeting and to approval by the relevant antitrust authorities. This is the last of the five divisions under the umbrella of Dynamit Nobel AG (DN) to be sold by mg. The company had just announced the disposal of the other four divisions to the American specialty chemicals company Rockwood on April 19.
DNK, which is headquartered in Weissenburg, southern Germany, generated sales of €876 million - or roughly 38 percent of DN's total sales - in 2003. DNK employs approximately 5,000 people at 22 sites in Europe and two in South America; around two-thirds of this total are employed in Germany. DNK supplies high-quality plastic systems solutions to customers, primarily in the automotive industry, and is one of the leading global players in the sector. Its customers include all the major European, Japanese and U.S. carmakers.
Flex-N-Gate, a supplier of plastics to the automotive industry, maintains 37 production sites in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Spain, Argentina and Brazil, and its 12,000 employees generated sales of approximately U.S.$ 1.5 billion per year.
”With the sale of Dynamit Nobel Kunststoff GmbH we have achieved our planned disposal of Dynamit Nobel AG ahead of schedule. What's more, the total enterprise value of €2.68 billion we achieved exceeds previous forecasts. In Flex-N-Gate we have found DNK a buyer that is using this deal to substantially strengthen its European presence and offers good prospects for the division sold by mg", stressed mg's CEO Udo Stark.
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