Aurubis AG, Europe’s biggest copper producer, is in advanced talks to sell its flat rolled products (FRP) division and hopes to agree a deal in 2020, CEO Roland Harings said on Wednesday.
Hamburg-based Aurubis is also considering more takeovers, especially in the recycling sector, Harings said, with possibilities in North America and Asia.
The company sees its FRP unit as non-core and is in advanced talks with industrial companies in Germany and overseas about a sale, Harings told a press conference after the group’s annual results.
European Union competition authorities in February blocked a plan by Aurubis to sell the division to German copper products producer Wieland, arguing the deal could have pushed up prices for consumers.
The FRP unit’s main production sites are in Germany, the United States, Netherlands and Finland and it has copper processing centers in Italy, Britain and Slovakia.
The unit generated revenues of about 1.3 billion euros ($1.4 billion) and produced 210,000 tonnes of products in the 2018/19 financial year. Its customers include the construction industry and the automotive, electronics and telecommunications sectors.
EU competition regulators in November opened an investigation into Aurubis’ planned 380 million euro acquisition of Belgian-Spanish metal recycling group Metallo.
However, Harings said Aurubis remains “extremely confident” that the EU will approve the Metallo deal by early April 2020.
The EU is asking very detailed questions about the Metallo deal and approval is taking longer than expected, he said.
However, Metallo sells globally and is not so concentrated on the EU so the deal would not have such competition implications in the EU, Aurubis’s Chief Financial Officer Rainer Verhoeven added.
Aurubis is looking for acquisition opportunities in recycling of other metals along with copper as it continues its multi-metal strategy to expand output of other metals alongside copper, Harings said.
The company wants to build on its strength in recycling complex metal wastes and the United States and elsewhere in North America along with Asia are possible regions being considered for expansion, he said.
He confirmed previous announcements that Aurubis still has financial resources of around 1 billion euros for acquisitions and expansion.
However, this does not mean a large takeover of this size is currently being considered, he said.
Source: Reuters.com