BASF plans to shed assets to try to salvage Solvay deal - sources

(Adds details, background)

By Arno Schuetze

FRANKFURT, Jan 8 (Reuters) - BASF is looking to but a sizeable portfolio of assets to experiment to salvage a commerce it struck at 2017 to buy Belgian chemicals masses Solvay's polyamide business, nation shut to the career said.

The German company is working with investment beach Lazard to find a buyer although the plastics assets, which could exist valued at approximately 450 million euros ($515 million), including debt, the nation said.

Information packages were sent out to latent buyers just ago Christmas, and first-round bids are expected by the aim of the month, they added.

BASF and Lazard declined to comment, cottage Solvay was no at once available although comment.

To experiment to allay concerns raised by European club antitrust regulators, BASF offered at October to exclude parts of Solvay's European polyamide business, including innovation capabilities, from the catalog of assets it plans to acquire.

It also offered to exclude manufacturing assets of Solvay's intermediate and engineering plastics business.

The European committee has site a provisional deadline of Jan. 25 although its ruling above the planned deal.

According to nation shut to the matter, BASF is marketing the assets to companies that also took divide at the 2017 auction although the Solvay business, including South Korea's SK Innovation , China's KingFa, and personal equity masses SK Capital, which owns stare Ascend.

The assets, with estimated middle wage of approximately 60 million euros and an expected enterprise impose (equity plus debt) of 7-8 period that, also involve engineering plastics that dine whet the appetite of peers such although Lanxess, they added.

BASF is seeking to strengthen its nylon affair and intensify its access to key growth markets at Asia and South America with the Solvay deal. The buy used to boosts its activities at nylon, or polyamide 6-6, a heat-resistant engineering flexible that is used at textiles and also industrial parts such although subway fittings, cooling fans and mechanism stand ducts.

For Solvay, the sale is divide of its motivate to divest high-volume products and concentrate above concrete applications at aerospace, automotive and the fat and gas industries where it can attain higher margins.

EU Commissioner Margrethe Vestager said last year that although sole a little manufacturers provide basic inputs to cause different nylon products, a careful assessment was needed if the proposed acquisition used to guide to higher prices.

A principal precursor material although polyamide 6-6 is ADN. The principal suppliers of this material are ascend too although Butachimie, a common venture of Solvay and Invista, a prior DuPont affair now held by Koch Industries.

($1 = 0.8744 euros) (Reporting by Arno Schuetze; Editing by token Potter)