Novasep Sold for EUR 425 Million

Princeton, NJ (Nov. 30)-Rockwood Holdings, Inc. (www.rockwoodspecialties.com) agreed to sell its Groupe Novasep (Pompey, France, www.novasep.com) subsidiary for EUR 425 million ($567 million) to a consortium of buyers consisting of Glide Buyout Partners BV, Banexi Capital, and Group Novasep management. Rockwood currently owns 78.6% of Novasep, and Novasep management holds the other 21.4%.

Groupe Novasep specializes in producing active pharmaceutical ingredients and intermediates, developing new purification processes, and large-scale chromatography. The company will continue to operate through two complementary divisions: Novasep Synthesis, the custom synthesis unit, and Novasep Process, the purification and chromatography unit. These two divisions have sales of roughly EUR 280 million ($374 million). 

Novasep operates mainly in Europe (France and Germany) with subsidiaries in the United States, China, Latin America and Japan. It has roughly 1300 employees at nine manufacturing sites.

Rockwood merged Groupe Novasep with the custom manufacturer Dynamic Synthesis in 2004. Earlier this year, Rockwood divested Rohner AG (Pratteln, Switzerland), a contract manufacturer of APIs and intermediates.

The transaction is expected to close in 60 days.