Turkey’s Yildirim Holding AS has signed an agreement with Croatian oil and gas group ING d.d. and Croatian gas company Prvo Plinarsko Društvo to acquire Terra Mineralna Gnojiva company (TMG), which holds a 54.517% stake in Croatian fertilizer producer Petrokemija d.d., Petrokemija said on its website.
Istanbul-based Yildirim Holding submitted a bid in January to TMG and Petrokemija’s other shareholders to acquire the fertilizer company (GM Jan. 14, p. 30). TMG is a joint venture of INA and Prvo Plinarsko Društvo.
“The process of changing ownership of TMG company in Petrokemija began with the signing of the share sales agreement with Turkey’s Yildirim Group,” INA said in a filing to the Zagreb bourse, as cited by a SeeNews report, and also confirmed by the Petrokemija website statement.
The change in ownership and the completion of this process will occur after the conditions of the sales contract are met, according to the statement, but no further elaboration was provided by the Croatian fertilizer company. Nor has the value of the proposed transaction been disclosed.
Kutina-based Petrokemija is Croatia’s only mineral fertilizer producer. Its nitrogen fertilizer production capacity includes 0.45 million mt/y of ammonia, 0.31 mt/y of ammonium nitrate, 0.5 million mt/y of urea, and 0.2 million mt/y of UAN, according to the Green Markets database.
Petrokemija stopped production earlier this year due to high natural gas prices, but according to the company it has made no employee terminations and salaries have continued to be paid.
Petrokemija in March delisted from the Zagreb Stock Exchange after its shareholders approved a proposal for the delisting (GM March 4, p. 31).
The company’s other shareholders include CERP, Croatia’s state-owned fund for enterprise restructuring and privatization, with a 17.9% stake. CERP in June offered for sale its entire interest in Petrokemija (GM June 10, p. 27). It was offering its 9,852,828 shares at a starting price of 305.4 million kuna (approximately $42 million at current exchange rates).
But it is unclear what progress CERP has made in the sale of its shares. Certainly, in its website statement, Petrokemija continues to list CERP as a shareholder in the company with a 17.9% stake.
Yildirim Holding also looks set to acquire Belgian fertilizer firm Rosier SA from Vienna-based fertilizers and polyolefins major Borealis AG.
Yildirim and Borealis in September inked a binding agreement for the Turkish company to acquire all of Borealis’ 98.09% stake in Rosier (GM Sept. 30, p. 30). Earlier this month, the two signed a binding agreement for Yilfert Holding to launch a mandatory takeover bid, followed by a squeeze-out, for Rosier (GM Nov. 11, p. 32).
The privately-owned Yildirim Group is a Turkish industrial conglomerate active in nine industrial sectors, including fertilizers and chemicals. It owns Turkish fertilizer producer Gemlik Gübre AŞ and is Turkey’s largest producer and exporter of CAN. It is also an ammonia producer, and is Turkey’s third largest trader of fertilizers (CAN, AN, DAP, AS, NPK, and urea).