(new: details of the sale agreement including exclusion of compulsory redundancies, total number of employees at both sites)

ESSEN (dpa-AFX) - Specialty chemicals group Evonik has found a buyer for its Lülsdorf site south of Cologne. The plant and the associated cyanuric chloride business in Wesseling will go to International Chemical Investors Group (ICIG), the MDax group announced in Essen on Thursday. The move had been planned for some time. A selling price was not disclosed. In early March, Evonik CEO Christian Kullmann had spoken of negotiations at an advanced stage.

The transfer of the site to the Luxembourg-based company, which employed around 4,800 people last year, is reportedly planned for mid-2023; competition regulators and Evonik's relevant boards would still have to give their approval.

Evonik has been focusing for some time on its three growth divisions Specialty Additives, Nutrition & Care and Smart Materials. At the same time, the Group had bundled the areas relating to standard chemical products in the Performance Materials division, which it intends to sell in the future-including Lülsdorf. "As planned, we are implementing the first step in the divestment of our three businesses in the Performance Materials division," Kullmann said, according to a statement on Thursday.

Still up for disposal is the super-absorbent segment with highly absorbent materials for diapers, for example, for which Evonik wants to find a buyer before 2023. However, if the economic environment is unfavorable, it could take even longer. At the beginning of March, Kullmann stressed that there was no time pressure.

Evonik employs more than 600 people at the Lülsdorf site on the right bank of the Rhine and the plant opposite in Wesseling. The production of cyanuric chloride for crop protection products and potassium derivatives for the food, feed and pharmaceutical industries will be divested. The alcoholates business for biodiesel production, which Evonik operates at two other sites in addition to Lülsdorf, will remain in the Group. It is now part of the Smart Materials division. At the Lülsdorf site, ICIG will operate the production of alcoholates exclusively for Evonik until 2027.

The buyer, ICIG, is already active with subsidiaries in the chlorine chemicals and specialty chemicals sectors and wants to expand the businesses based at the two sites, Evonik added. The agreements also include the exclusion of compulsory redundancies until 2032, it said.

Analyst Gunther Zechmann of Bernstein Research sees the sale as confirming his positive assessment of Evonik. The Essen-based company continues to focus on higher-growth business areas, he wrote in an initial assessment. The company's management is fulfilling its promises in the gradual sale of the Performance Materials Business Unit./mis/nas/stw/he