Semperit selling rubber gloves business to Singapore-based Harps

Vienna – Semperit AG Holding has reached an agreement to sell its gloves production business unit Sempermed to southeast Asian gloves producer Harps Global Pte. Ltd.

The agreed sale price is €115 million and is subject to customary price adjustment mechanisms upon completion of transaction, Semperit announced 16 Dec.

The transaction is expected to be completed in the second quarter of 2023.

Sempermed operates two gloves production facilities: in Wimpassing, Austria, and a recently expanded facility in Kamunting, Malaysia.

In addition, the gloves business operates a packaging production plant in Sopron, Hungary and a gloves mould-manufacturing site in Nilai, Malaysia.

According to the agreement, the production of surgical gloves in Wimpassing and their packaging in Sopron will initially be excluded from the transaction.

The sites, said the Vienna-based group, will continue as contract manufacturers for the buyer “for several years”.

In this context, Semperit said it expected an impairment reversal in the order of €30-35 million for the assets of Sempermed.

In 2021, Sempermed recorded earnings of €300 million on sales of €626 million.

Over the first nine months of 2022, however, the medical unit, which mainly makes examination and surgical gloves, posted a loss of €4 million, compared to a profit of €277 million the year before.

According to its website, Harp currently manufactures nitrile examination gloves at its facility in Teluk Intan, in the state of Perak Darul Ridzuan in Malaysia.

The unit has 34 production lines and an annual installed production capacity of over 11.6 billion gloves. 

Semperit announced in April that it had expanded its P7 rubber gloves manufacturing plant in Kamunting, Malaysia with the addition of six dipping lines.

The new facilities, with an output of 1.8 billion pieces per year, brought the total number of production lines at the site to 18 – towards reaching a target capacity of 5.4 billion pieces per year.

The first 12 lines at “the most modern factory complex at the Kamunting site,” were built between 2015 and 2017.