DuPont board approves N&B split

DuPont’s board of directors has approved the separation of DuPont’s Nutrition & Biosciences (N&B) business through an exchange offer whereby stockholders can elect to tender DuPont shares for those of N&B on terms to be announced. This process is expected to be completed by 1 February.

The separation will be followed by the simultaneous combination of N&B with International Flavors & Fragrances in a Reverse Morris Trust transaction in which shares of N&B common stock will be converted into shares of IFF common stock. IFF has just received the final regulatory approval needed for this merger with unconditional clearance from the European Commission. The transaction should close within Q1. IFF shareholders had already approved.

Separately, N&B has joined forces with Kemira to commercialise applications for new biomaterials and biobased chemicals based on DuPont’s engineered polysaccharide platform technology in their respective core markets. Kemira will mainly supply the paper and board, water treatment, and oil and gas industries. This platform uses plant-based sugars as raw materials and proprietary enzymes catalyst for the reaction to create polysaccharide materials that can enhance sustainability, biobased content and biodegradability across different product lines and applications. It has been developed advanced pilot scale and the technology can be scaled up to global level.