And that was still — the first part of the year was better for M&M. So we have gotten some volume recovery in — from Vital in particular and in Asia. Again, auto builds are very consistent, and they’re not still back to 2019 levels, but they’re consistent. And so we think with volume recovery, we have been pushing through pricing on differentiated products, right? So if you look at all of those things, if you look at productivity as well, not synergy, but regular productivity at our M&M plan, we expect to probably get another, I don’t know, $40 million, $50 million from that this year. So if you look at all those things and start adding up those volumes and the recovery, M&M was affected in fourth quarter and early part of first quarter with the very same factors we were, right, with the same destocking, with the same seasonality and slowdown — and we are seeing them recover from that as well, again, in March and as we move forward into second quarter.
Jeff Zekauskas: Thanks so much.
Operator: Our next question is coming from Josh Spector from UBS. Your line is now live.
Josh Spector: Hi, thanks for taking my question. I guess, first, I wanted to ask on the JV. Can you talk about how much cash you’ll be getting into from that combination? A bit confused by the comments in the release about 0.7x leverage reduction, 12 months post close, if that’s related with that or not? It seems like a big number, if it is. So can you clarify?
Lori Ryerkerk: Yes, absolutely. So we expect to net $400 million to $450 million that we can apply towards debt reduction from the food ingredient’s deal. We think — I have to say we’re really excited about this deal. We’re really excited about the JV structure that we’ve agreed to with Mitsui. If I back up a bit, we also, at the same time, announced the extension of our joint venture for the Fairway Methanol joint venture. This has been a great joint venture for us. Mitsui has proven to be a really great partner. And I think it’s been really financially beneficial for both companies as well as strategically beneficial. And we see food ingredients being in addition to that strong relationship that we built with them through the years.
This is really what we were looking for. We’ve looked at this product for some time and thought it’s not necessarily a core piece of our portfolio, but it is a core piece of our operations in Frankfurt. And so by doing a joint venture, we think, one, we’ll really benefit from the expertise that Mitsui has in food and nutrition and their ability to market and help us on that end. We think they will also benefit from us continuing to be able to integrate into our acetyl chain. We provide acetic acid and crotonaldehyde into the — now into the Fairway joint venture. And we’ll continue to benefit from the strong partnership that we have as well as the manufacturing synergies because we will continue to operate the joint venture, and it is very embedded into our Frankfurt operations.
And it allows both of us to participate in growth in what we think will be — continue to be a high-growth market for food ingredients, store base and sweeteners as — especially as one of the few, maybe only Western company providing sweeteners anyway of this type, we see a lot of positive movement in terms of volumes and demand and pricing going forward. So again, we’re really excited about it. And just to reiterate, to answer your question, we do expect to be able to pay off another $400 million to $450 million of debt as a result of this joint venture.
