Ciech to sell Ciech Polfa within a year

2010-08-06

Ciech, the listed chemicals group, will make a fresh attempt to divest Ciech Polfa, its pharmaceutical arm. According to the company’s newly-approved Restructuring Plan 2010-2015, which envisages divestments of non-core assets and other measures intended to shore up Ciech’s balance sheet, Ciech Polfa (and its Hungarian unit, Polfa Hungaria) is to be sold off within the next 12 months.
Ciech Polfa specialises in exporting ready-made medicines, pharmaceutical substances and packaging for the pharmaceutical industry, mainly but not exclusively to markets of Central and Eastern Europe, e.g. Russia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Ukraine, Bulgaria etc. It also acts as importer of active pharmaceutical substances and chemical excipient agents essential for the production of pharmaceuticals.
In 2009, Ciech Polfa generated sales revenues of PLN 59.8m (€14.9m), which represented an increase of 8.9% compared with the previous year. Of this, sales of ready-made medicines reached PLN 38.9m (€9.7m), up by 9.6% and accounting for 65% of the total. Pharmaceutical ingredients represented 28% of total sales, and packagings 5%. The company derived about 70% of its sales revenues from exports. According to Ciech’s annual report for 2009, the single biggest customer of Ciech Polfa was Polfa Pabianice, which accounted for 20% of its sales last year, whereas the main suppliers were Herbapol Warszawa, Jelfa and Bioton (accounting for 16%, 11% and 11% of the total value of supplies, respectively).
Polfa Hungaria reported sales revenues of PLN 2.4m (€0.6m) in 2009.
Several earlier attempts to sell Ciech Polfa were unsuccessful.