South Korea's Lotte Chemical will buy stakes in Samsung SDI's chemical unit and Samsung Fine Chemicals for about Won 3 trillion ($2.6 billion), the companies said Friday.
Lotte will buy a 90% stake in the chemical business of Samsung SDI for about Won 2.3 trillion and a 31.133% stake in Samsung Fine Chemicals for Won 465 billion. It expects to complete due diligence over the first half of 2016.
The chemical business will be spun off into a new company, tentatively called S Chemical, which will be established in February, Lotte said.
The stake in Samsung Fine Chemicals is held by several Samsung Group subsidiaries such as Samsung SDI, Samsung Electronics, Samsung C&T, Samsung Electro-Mechanics and Hotel Shilla.
Samsung SDI operates a plant at Yeosu which makes styrenics such as acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene, expandable polystyrene, high-impact PS, and so on.
The company had plans to expand the 560,000 mt/year production capacity of ABS at the Yeosu plant by 30,000 mt/year over 2016.
