Ashland Inc

Come together

CONFERENCE REPORT RIPA and IPANA pooled their annual meetings this year, giving the US packaging professional a much bigger bang for his or her buck. Paul W Rankin reports on what was a thoroughly fascinating few days in Florida

RIPA testing panel

Ashland Distribution becomes Nexeo Solutions

Ashland has completed the sale of Ashland Distribution to Nexeo Solutions, an affiliate of TPG Capital, for approximately $979m. With a staff of around 2,000 across North America, Europe and Asia

DKSH celebrates best year

Switzerland-headquartered DKSH has announced the “best results ever in the company’s almost 150-year history”, posting a 2010 post-tax profit of SFr 121m ($140.4m) from total sales worth SFr 10bn.

Ashland sells out

DIVESTMENT After much industry speculation over the past few years, US-based Ashland has announced that it is to divest its Distribution arm, opting to sell it to TPG Capital, a global private investment firm with $48bn of capital under management

Ashland to sell Distribution

Ashland Inc has hired Bank of America to advise on the sale of its Ashland Distribution arm, Reuters reports.

Ashland Distribution reports rising revenues

Ashland Inc has announced second quarter sales of $2.2bn and a net income of $22m compared to respective figures of $2bn and $48m a year ago.

Ashland Distribution sees sales drop

Ashland has announced a first quarter 2010 net income of $86m from sales worth just over $2bn. At the same time, sales at the company’s Distribution division fell 15 per cent year-onyear to $729m while volume per day decreased 8 per cent versus the prior-year quarter. Volume was down just 4 per cent “despite typical December-quarter seasonality”. Meanwhile, gross profit as a percentage of sales came to 9.2 per cent as opposed to 8.6 per cent a year ago. Margin improvements and SG&A expense reductions, the company continues, did not fully offset the impact of volume reductions and as a result EBITDA declined 28 per cent year-on-year to $13m and was 1.8 per cent of sales.

Opportunity knocks

ANALYSIS The chemical distribution market looks set to continue growing as producers further outsource sales functions to overcome complexity, says a new white paper by the Boston Consulting Group

APM picks Quadra for Canada

Quebec-headquartered Quadra has been awarded the exclusive Canadian distribution rights for Ashland Performance Materials’ (APM) line of polyvinyl acetate homopolymer and copolymer emulsions

Sales down at Ashland

Ashland has announced fourth quarter sales and operating revenue of $2.1bn, an operating income of $133m and a net income of $93m.

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