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Strategies & Market Trends : Speculating in Takeover Targets -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: richardred who wrote (2277)	7/17/2010 1:56:40 PM
From: richardred	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 7239

Rio Tinto sells last pieces of Alcan Packaging to Amcor and Sun Capital By Dan Hockensmith, Plastics News Posted 7 July 2010 7:49 am GMT International mining conglomerate Rio Tinto of London has sold off the last of its Alcan Packaging business. In a July 5 news release, Rio Tinto said that Australia’s Amcor bought Alcan’s medical flexible business for $66m and that Alcan’s beauty packaging division was acquired by Sun European Partners – a London-based subsidiary of US-based Sun Capital Partners – for an undisclosed sum. Alcan’s beauty division employs about 8,000 and operates 26 plants in 12 countries. It had $932m in sales in 2008. The medical business deal, which consists of four North American plants with $115m in sales, completes Amcor’s acquisition of the Alcan Packaging pharmaceuticals, tobacco, Food Europe and Food Asia divisions. “Amcor has been a very aggressive consolidator in the packaging industry. For several years they struggled because of a lack of focus,” Ghansham Panjabi, an analyst at Robert W. Baird & Co. in Milwaukee, said in a July 6 telephone interview. “They really seem to be making a calculated bet on plastics packaging, I’m not sure how long it will take for the investment to bring returns, but it’s creating a situation where [in the packaging supply chain, companies] will have to go to Amcor — they’re that big now.” Packaging giant Bemis in March acquired Alcan’s Food Americas division for $1.2bn. “The problem with [plastics packaging] is that it’s fragmented globally,” Panjabi said. As a result, US and Western European packaging firms have missed out on some sales opportunities in Asia and in developing markets, he said. “The US industry has struggled because the pricing pendulum is toward the customer level, but now, due to industry consolidation, it’s swinging back the other way,” Panjabi said. Since 2008, Rio Tinto has received more than $10bn from the sale of assets. The money has been used to reduce the debt involved in the 2007 purchase of Alcan for $38bn, in which Rio Tinto beat out Alcoa’s $33bn bid. Rio Tinto sold the packaging assets to focus on its core mining business. prw.com