Borealis AG (Vienna, Austria; www.borealisgroup.com) has divested a package of fertilizer process technologies and established a new technology partnership with Casale SA (Lugano, Switzerland; www.casale.ch), is a global leader in the design and refurbishment of ammonia methanol and urea plants. The partnership will enable Borealis to focus on its core competencies of the production and distribution of high-quality fertilizer products, while Casale will expand their portfolio of technologies for commercialization.
Under the terms of the deal, Casale has acquired ownership of Borealis’ proprietary process technologies for the production of nitric acid, ammonium nitrate solution, urea ammonium nitrate and other technologies for different downstream fertilizer products including granulation technology. Casale will further develop the process technologies in close co-operation with Borealis.
“This partnership meets our objective to partner with a global engineering and technology leader who can leverage the maximum value of this fertilizer technology portfolio,” says Hubert Puchner, Borealis vice president, Business Development Base Chemicals. “Our fertilizer operations and product development will benefit from the synergies between Borealis’ core competencies, such as the production and distribution of high quality fertilizers, and Casale’s engineering and technology leadership.”
“Acquiring these excellent technologies is an important step in our strategy to expand Casale’s process design capabilities to downstream products directly linked with our traditional technologies, ammonia and urea, so that we can serve the nitrogen fertilizer industry in the most complete and integrated way,” says Giuseppe Guarino, Casale’s chief executive officer. “Casale Holding’s recent acquisition of the control of Chemoproject Nitrogen, a Czech engineering company that has built tens of nitric acid and nitrates plants, fits particularly well with this latest deal with Borealis. The specific plant engineering expertise of Chemoproject Nitrogen perfectly complements the process know-how we have just acquired. That means that we can now offer the fertilizer industry the most complete possible solution for nitric acid plants and their integration into nitrogen fertilizer complexes.”