Grande Portage, a company headed by the Galway entrepreneur Mr Declan Ganley, has confirmed that it submitted a bid for Irish Fertilizer Industries (IFI) by yesterday's deadline for the receipt of offers for the company.
Mr Ganley is chief executive of Grande Portage, an Irish registered company which is chaired by Mr Phil Flynn. The shareholders in the company include a publicly-quoted Canadian natural resources company, Grande Portage Resources, in which Mr Ganley has a stake. Other shareholders are Ganley International, of which Mr Ganley is managing director, and the equity arm of a major US bank.
It was not clear how many other bids had been received by Investment Bank of Ireland (IBI), which is handling the IFI sale on behalf of its shareholders, by the close of business yesterday. IFI is jointly owned by the State, through NET, and the British chemical company, ICI, which has a 49 per cent stake.
Among the other parties believed to have shown an interest in bidding for IFI are the publicly-quoted agri-business group IAWS, which owns the Gouldings fertiliser group. A spokesman for the company could not comment yesterday on whether or not it had submitted a bid.
A number of international firms have also been mentioned in connection with IFI including the Finnish firm Kemira, US company Terra, and Norwegian firm Norsk Hydro, Europe's largest fertiliser manufacturer.
Mr Ganley said that if Grande Portage was successful in its bid for IFI, it intended to grow the business. IFI, which has a 40 per cent share of the Irish market and about 4.5 per cent of the European market, employs 630 people in Cork, Arklow and Belfast. It reported pre-tax losses of £10.7 million (€13.6 million) for the year ending September 1998. Its sale was prompted by ICI's decision last year to realise its shareholding following the disposal of its fertiliser interests in Britain.
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