Nippon Shokubai to Obtain Acrylic Acid Business from Sumitomo Chemical Singapore.

Nippon Shokubai Co., Ltd. (headquartered in Chuo-ku, Osaka under its president Hiroshi Yanagida) today announced it has entered into an agreement with Sumitomo Chemical Co., Ltd. (headquartered in Chuo-ku, Osaka under its president Hiromasa Yonekura) and Toagosei Co., Ltd. (headquartered in Minato-ku, Tokyo under its president Akihiko Yamadera). According to the terms of the agreement, Nippon Shokubai will obtain part of the acrylic acid business in Singapore of Sumitomo Chemical and Toagosei.
The details of this agreement are as follows:

1. Sumitomo Chemical Singapore Pte., Ltd. will provide Nippon Shokubai with 51% of the shares of Singapore Acrylic Pte., Ltd. (The company has an annual production capacity of 60,000 metric tons of crude acrylic acid. It is 60% owned by Sumitomo Chemical Singapore and 40% owned by Toagosei Asia.)
2. Sumitomo Chemical Singapore will provide Nippon Shokubai with all the shares of Sumika Glacial Acrylic Pte., Ltd. (The company has an annual production capacity of 25,000 metric tons of refined acrylic acid. It is 100% owned by Sumitomo Chemical Singapore.)

As a result of the above agreement, Nippon Shokubai will gain worldwide annual production capacity of 450,000 metric tons of acrylic acid.

This assignment of businesses represents part of a business swap agreed to by Nippon Shokubai and Sumitomo Chemical in March 2002, in which Sumitomo Chemical agreed to assign its acrylic acid business in exchange for Nippon Shokubai’s MMA monomer business. The three companies entered into this agreement with the unanimous understanding that each company could strengthen and develop its own core business by focusing its management resources in that particular area.

The three parties to the agreement are currently working out the details of the assignment and the necessary procedures. The share assignments are scheduled to take place at the end of June 2004.