The purchase price has not been disclosed. "Alcan's strategy is to focus its Packaging Beauty businesses on those areas in which its has a differentiated product offering," explains Alcan Packaging president and ceo Christel Bories. Decoplast employs 312 and had 2004 sales of €26m.
The multinational is simultaneously exploring selling its Food Packaging Plastic Bottle business, which has facilities in North America and France, as part of an ongoing refocusing of its food packaging activities. "Our food packaging business is moving strategically to focus greater resources on the flexible packaging market, where we already enjoy substantial scale and leadership positions and where we believe the most attractive growth opportunities lie," says Bories.
The US$130m business, reportedly a pioneer of multi-layer bottle technology for hot- and cold-fill products, operates three US plants, one in Canada and one in France and employs 495.
Alcan has also announced it is to invest US$42.6m in building a new rotogravure-focussed tobacco packaging plant at Reidsville Industrial Park, North Carolina, creating 170 new jobs, and expected to begin production in the second quarter of 2006.
