Honeywell Controls the Nylon 6 Market

Honeywell and BASF completed a major transaction on May 1, when Honeywell sold its worldwide engineering-plastics business to BASF in exchange for BASF’s worldwide nylon-fiber business and $90 million. With this transaction, BASF exited the fibers market to concentrate on plastics. The new Honeywell Nylon division will offer Honeywell’s Anso® and BASF’s Zeftron® carpet-fiber brands and will provide nylon fiber to the carpet-fiber industry in commercial, automotive, and residential end uses. With its 1999 acquisition of AlliedSignal and this deal with BASF, Honeywell has become the only major supplier of nylon 6 (as opposed to the nylon 6,6 produced by Solutia and DuPont) to the carpet industry. Nylon 6 is inherently more recyclable than nylon 6,6. – JB