Insulation industry news from Global Insulation

Hungary: Masterplast has concluded an agreement to acquire Pimco. Pimco is in the process of establishing a Euro35.7m, 20,000t/yr glass wool plant at Szerencs, Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén County. Növekedés News has reported that an advance investment by Masterplast in the company will enable Pimco's Szerencs plant project to move into the implementation phase. It would then enter production in 2024. Masterplast will fund the investment using the proceeds of its Euro23.3m stock market capital raising in October 2022. The upcoming Szerencs plant was previously the subject of a Euro35.7m grant from the Hungarian Investment Promotion Agency.

Masterplast employs 1400 people across 10 countries.

Belgium: Etex has raised Euro800m through a sustainability-linked medium - long-term unsecured loan. The producer says that the private placement, called a Schuldschein in German finance law, comprises three Euro-denominated tranches with maturities of three, five and seven years, at fixed and floating rates.

CEO Bernard Delvaux said “We are very pleased with this new Schuldschein issuance which we successfully completed in a challenging context. It testifies to a significant appreciation of Etex’s credit quality, of its performance of the last years and it demonstrates the investors’ confidence in the company’s strategy. Moreover, this operation broadens our investors’ base at attractive market conditions, increases the number of maturities and considerably extends the duration of our debt profile.”

US: ADFORS Americas, a Saint-Gobain subsidiary, plans to invest US$28m in expanding its Dublin, Georgia, glass wool products plant. Dow Jones Institutional Newswires has reported that the facility serves Saint-Gobain’s glass wool insulation production. Once completed in 2024, the expansion will create 400 new local roles in serving the plant’s operations.

The Georgia state government has contributed US$12m in tax credits towards the project’s funding.

Austria: Austrotherm has announced its construction of a 226kW solar power installation on the roofs of storage halls 6 and 7 of its Purbach extruded polystyrene insulation plant in Burgenland. The EU’s Regional Development Fund provided funding towards the project.

Africa: UAE-based BCI Holding plans to expand its polyurethane (PUR) plant in Egypt. Arab Finance News has reported that the company also intends to establish to new PU plants, in Algeria and Nigeria. For the realisation of these plans, it will partly rely on a US$30.0m financing package from the International Finance Corporation. The PU supplier expects the moves to generate 80 new direct jobs. It said its strategy aims to combat poverty and create jobs by supporting the growth of the private sector in the Middle East and Africa. It added that the new plants will also help strengthen regional integration and technology transfer, and the development of regional supply chains.

Denmark: Rockwool has signed a new revolving credit facility worth Euro600m. The facility replaced its existing facilities and has a built-in pricing mechanism connecting its costs to three externally-assured sustainability goals. The goals are CO₂ emission reduction, increasing the number of countries in which it offers its recycling schemes and reducing factory waste. The purposes of the facility are to strengthen capital structure and support long-term growth.

Chief Financial Officer Kim Junge Andersen said, “While we already are a net-carbon-negative company, we have committed ourselves to ambitious sustainability targets to reduce our carbon footprint and waste from operations and to expand our recycling offerings. To measure our progress, it is important for us to have a fact-based and auditable approach to how we maximise our products’ positive impact while minimising the environmental impact of our operations.”