LONDON — Arch Chemicals Inc. has signed an agreement to sell its 50 percent share in Planar Solutions, a joint venture with Wacker Chemical Corp. in chemical mechanical planarization (CMP) slurries, to Fujifilm Electronic Materials U.S.A., Inc., a U.S. subsidiary of Fuji Photo Film Co., Ltd., for approximately $17 million.
The deal is based on a $10 million cash payment and the assumption of approximately $7 million of guarantees of the joint venture's debt by Fujifilm. The transaction, which is expected to close by November 30, 2005, has been approved both by Arch's Board of Directors and by the Board of Fuji Photo Film Co. Ltd.

Planar Solutions has manufacturing and customer-support facilities in Adrian, Michigan, and Mesa, Arizona. Arch (Norwalk, Connecticut) expects to record a pretax gain of approximately $10 million on this transaction which it would use to pay down debt. This transaction supplements the sale of the majority of Arch's former Microelectronic Materials businesses in November 2004 to Fuji Photo Film Co. Ltd.

“This divestiture supports our strategy to focus our business portfolio and to redeploy resources to pursue growth opportunities in our key growth platform, Treatment Products. We will use proceeds from this sale to reduce our debt and to strengthen our balance sheet, giving us additional flexibility to pursue possible complementary acquisitions," said Michael Campbell, Arch Chemicals' chairman, president and chief executive officer, in a statement.