Alfa SAB de CV plans to spin off its majority share in plastics materials and products maker Alpek SAB de CV.
In a recent news release, officials with Alfa in Monterrey, Mexico, said the spinoff would be formed into a new publicly traded company under the name Controladora Alpek. The new firm would be listed on the Mexican Stock Exchange. Alfa shareholders would receive one share in the new form for each share of Alfa.
A shareholders meeting on the proposal will take place on Oct. 24. Alpek's businesses include Alpek Polyester, a large PET resin and recycling business in North America, as well as Octal, a global PET sheet producer.
In the most recent Plastics News ranking, Alpek Polyester was North America's 16th largest recycler with annual processing capacity of 185 million pounds. Octal ranked as the region's 99th largest film and sheet maker with annual sales estimated at $48 million.
Alfa is an industrial conglomerate that posted sales of $16.4 billion in 2023.
At the NPE2024 trade show earlier this year, Alpek introduced CaPETall, a new PET resin for bottle caps. Officials said the new material is a 100 percent PET product that improves post-consumer PET bottle recycling. Also at the show, officials said Alpek's Octal unit has developed DPET, a process that allows PET sheet to be made directly from PET melt resin.
Earlier this year, Alpek closed its Cooper River PET resin plant in Charleston, S.C., in an effort to optimize the firm's footprint. The site has annual production capacity of about 375 million pounds.
Alpek also is a partner in Corpus Christi Polymers LLC, a joint venture that is building a major PET resin and feedstocks plant in Corpus Christi, Texas. Work on that project has been delayed several times and has been paused since September 2023.