Industrial company Polyram is expanding its US business. TASE-listed Ram-On, which owns 35% of Polyram, today announced that it had signed a lease to rent a 2.5-acre property in Evansville, Indiana for its first US production facility. The Ram-On share price responded to the news with rises that reached 6% by noon, putting it up 40% on the year and pushing the company's market cap up to NIS 250 million.
The controlling shareholder in Polyram is Ishay Davidi's FIMI Opportunity Funds with a 65% stake. FIMI became a partner in the company in 2015 by acquiring shares from Ram-On, not including its real estate holdings, for NIS 350 million. Polyram estimates that it will have to invest NIS 20 million in the site, and that production there will start in early 2018.
Ram-On said that the US plant would initially manufacture Bondyram products, which the company said included "coupling agents, impact modifiers, and adhesive resins." Polyram's sales of Bondyram products grew 9% to IS 178 million in 2016, 36% of the company's total sales of NIS 488 million.
Polyram develops, manufactures, and markets products and engineering compounds and Bondyram products for plastics industry manufacturers, mainly in Israel, the US, and Europe. Most of the company's production takes place in its plant in Israel, located on Moshav Ram-On in the Jezreel Valley. The company has nearly 200 employees. The most prominent shareholder in Ram-On is Moshav Ram-On with 18% of the company's share capital, with the rest being held by investment institutions and the public. In the US market, Polyram's products are currently designed for the auto industry. In Europe, its products are also used in the electrical and electronic products and accessories industry, and in Israel, they are used in the irrigation industry, as well.
Published by Globes [online], Israel Business News - www.globes-online.com - on July 10, 2017
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