SIBUR to Sell Fertilizer Assets to Siberian Business Union

SIBUR Holding, controlled by billionaires Gennady Timchenko and Leonid Mikhelson, agreed to sell fertilizer assets to Siberian Business Union, Russia’s third-largest producer of coal for power stations.

The deal will come up for approval at the next board meeting, SIBUR, Eastern Europe’s biggest petrochemicals producer, said today in an e-mailed statement. The assets include OAO Azot in the coal-producing Kemerovo region and the Angarsk nitrogen fertilizer plant, both in Siberia, SIBUR and the buyer, known by its Russian initials SDS, said in separate statements.

The deal was valued at as much as $1 billion, Vedomosti reported yesterday, citing people it didn’t identify. Ammonium nitrate is used in mining as well as fertilizers.

Uralchem, Russia’s second-largest producer of nitrogen fertilizers, is in talks to buy 51 percent of OAO Perm Mineral Fertilizer from SIBUR to help double urea production, Uralchem Chief Executive Officer Dmitry Konyaev said separately today. Uralchem values the Perm unit, which wasn’t included in SIBUR’s deal with SDS, at $550 million.