Air Products (NYSE: APD), Lehigh Valley, PA, has agreed to sell the performance materials division of its materials technologies segment to Evonik Industries AG for $3.8 billion. Operational facilities, supplier contracts, labs, contracts, customers, and employees and certain legal entities associated with PMD would transfer to Evonik, which will continue to run the company from Allentown, PA.

“The sale of PMD is consistent with the long-term strategy for Air Products that we announced in September 2014,” said Seifi Ghasemi, Air Products president and CEO. “I am very pleased that PMD has a great future ahead of it as a core business of a company which is even larger than Air Products.

Air Products is in the process of spinning off its Electronic Materials Division to shareholders as a separate public company, Versum Materials. And the company recently said it will exit the energy-from-waste business to focus on its core industrial gas business.