Chemical giants "add and subtract" between optimizing assets

Intensive divestiture of non-core assets

On June 30, BASF and Carlyle Group formally completed a paint business transaction worth 7.7 billion euros. BASF received a pre-tax cash income of about 5.8 billion euros and retained a Surventis 40% stake in the newly established company. The deal, which took nearly a year to close at a price slightly higher than market expectations, shows that chemical assets are still attractive in the private equity market. As competition intensified, BASF chose to let go to focus on the higher value-added specialty chemicals business.

DuPont completed the divestiture of aramid business on April 1, selling Kevlar and Nomex brands to TJC's Arclin to about US $1.8 billion. The aramid business has been DuPont's iconic asset since its invention in the 1960 s, however under the current strategy, the business has slowed down and has limited synergies with core sectors such as electronics, aquatic environments treatment, and medical, and was eventually decisively divested.

Britain's Sintema reached an agreement in June to sell the Czech acrylic monomer business to private equity fund Mutares. Xin Tema made it clear that the move is to exit the capital-intensive and evaporative field of bulk chemicals, and instead concentrate resources on the research of high value-added adhesives and sealant specialty items.

Vietnam's Duc Giang Chemicals plans to sell the central ethanol plant, which was acquired with about 0.253 billion Vietnamese dong two years ago and subsequently invested about 378 billion Vietnamese dong in renovation. However, due to the ethanol business contributing less than 2% of the group's total revenue and high operating costs, the board of directors decided to stop the exit and reallocate the funds to the core phosphate and fertilizer businesses.

Moving from scale expansion to value creation

Throughout these transactions, the divestiture logic is highly consistent, freeing up capital and regulation resources from low-synergy, low-return assets and allocating them to areas of greater strategic value. After the sale of BASF's coatings business, group CEO Bo Mule made it clear that the transaction will be applied to enhance R & D investment in the core chemicals business and accelerate the commercialization of low-carbon production technologies. At the same time, the retention of a 40% stake in Surventis also shows that BASF still maintains a strategic focus on the future coatings market, however prefers to participate in a financial investment rather than an operational-led manner.

After divesting its aramid business, DuPont has further concentrated on high-development areas such as semiconductor materials, biopharmaceutical consumables and clean energy, and has recently invested greater than 70% of its capital expenditure budget in the electronics and manufacturing materials sector.

The CEO of Sintemar stressed that the proceeds from the sale of the Czech factory will be applied to expand the production capacity of specialty acrylic emulsions in the United States and to accelerate the research of bio-based adhesive items.

Honeywell is a model of the addition and subtraction strategy, completing the spin-off of the aerospace and high-performance materials business into the independent listing of Sotheby, while continuing to promote the divestiture of personal protective equipment, productivity solutions and services business. Since 2023, Honeywell has completed a total of approximately $11.5 billion in strategic acquisitions, while returning greater than $8 billion through the divestiture of non-core assets, creating a virtuous cycle of divestiture, financing and reinvestment. This two-way operation reflects the giant's fine regulation of the asset portfolio, no longer passively holding historical assets, however actively according to the strategic fit and rate of return dynamic adjustment.

Asset optimization becomes the norm strategy

Judging from recent developments, asset restructuring in the chemical sector has evolved from an occasional event to a normalized strategic regulation tool. The sector is shifting from big to refined, and competitive advantage no longer is determined by asset size, however on the level of technical barriers and market share levels in the selected track. According to a report released by Accenture in July, the total amount of divestiture transactions in the global chemical sector in the first half of 2026 increased by about 28% compared with the same period last year, of which greater than 60% of the transactions were clearly driven by strategic focus.

At the capital market level, investors' valuation logic to chemical companies has shifted significantly, with groups with vague strategic positioning and complex asset portfolios suffering from growing diversification discounts, while companies with clear business boundaries and a focus on segmentation tracks are receiving higher price-to-earnings premiums.

greater companies are expected to follow portfolio optimization actions in the second half of the year as substantial deals such as Olin's peer-to-peer merger with Huntsman and Aequita's acquisition of Lionel de Basser and SABIC's European assets continue to advance. In an increasingly complex and evaporative ecological stability of growing global sector cycle evaporative environment, accelerating global energy transition, and rising geopolitical uncertainty, dynamic portfolio regulation with advances and retreats will have become a core capability to strategic decision-making to chemical companies.