It was third time lucky for Carlsberg in July when it was successful with its latest offer of £3.3 billion ($4.2bn) for UK beverage firm Britvic. The acquisition will enable the Danish brewer to expand its operations into multiple drinks sectors. Britvic shareholders will vote on the proposed takeover in the coming months.
As big a deal as that is, it is dwarfed by the potential sums of money involved in a possible takeover of polymers firm Covestro by Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC). ADNOC’s interest was first reported a year ago, with suggestions that the company was willing to pay $11bn. The latest offer of $12.5bn has led to Covestro agreeing to ‘concrete negotiations’.
In a fairly busy month for deals, Dow agreed to purchase US-based recycler Circulus and add 50,000 tonnes of recycled materials to its portfolio, Pacteon Group acquired US-based conveyor systems manufacturer Descon Integrated Conveyor Solutions, and extrusion firm Sigma Plastics Group bought select stretch film assets from Stalwart Plastics.
The ALPLA Group, meanwhile, expanded its pharma division with the acquisition of Heinlein Plastik–Technik, which develops and manufactures closure systems, dosing systems and application aids for the pharma and medical industries, and Bericap was busy opening and acquiring plants across three continents.
From financial forces to forces of nature, as a powerful storm swept across the Caribbean last month, wreaking havoc. At one point a category 5 hurricane, before becoming a category 5 tropical storm, Beryl caused extensive damage in Grenada as it crossed the Caribbean Sea, before making landfall in Texas and causing firms such as Houston Poly to batten down the hatches and close their offices until the worst had passed.
There were also significant fears that petrochemical facilities in Mexico and parts of the Gulf Coast in Texas could be in the path of the destructive storm.
Facing headwinds of its own, bioplastics firm Biome blamed regulatory challenges for disappointing revenues in the first quarter, with the North American coffee packaging market somewhat subdued.
From subdued results to subsidiaries, with several companies opening new ones this past month. In a strategic move that it claims underscores its commitment to the ‘important’ UK market, thermoplastic elastomers producer Kraiburg TPE opened a subsidiary in England, having previously worked with Abbey Polymers since 2020.
Meanwhile, Arburg expanded its presence in southeast Europe with the opening of a subsidiary in Romania, and Austria’s Lindner Recyclingtech established an Indian subsidiary in Delhi.
While one Austrian firm expands outside of the country, others are building inside, with Upper Austria becoming the home of TriPlast, coined ‘Europe’s most modern sorting plant for lightweight packaging’. The Bernegger, ARA and GreenDot facility in Ennshafen has an annual capacity of 100,000t of plastics and metal packaging and will create more than 60 green jobs thanks to an investment of $70 million.
Still in the recycling world, Polystyvert has secured more than $16m in funding to put towards its inaugural plant in Quebec, Canada. Set to be operational by 2026 and to focus on highly contaminated polystyrene waste, the funding was led by Infinity Recycling, alongside SWEN Blue Ocean and Earth Foundry.
Also preventing waste from going to landfill is Ineos, which has commissioned a multilayer blown film line with machine direction orientation at its R&D centre in Brussels, Belgium, to enable customers to co-develop recyclable flexible packaging films without losing production capacity on their own lines.
Over in the US, Ineos Olefins & Polymers USA has broken ground on a 310-megawatt solar project in Bosque County, Texas, the output of which will cover the net purchased electricity load for all 14 of the company’s manufacturing, fractionation and storage facilities in the country.
And hoping to cover 40 per cent of its electricity needs in Parma, Italy, Sidel’s photovoltaic system has become fully operational, boasting 5,000 solar panels and producing 2,900 MWh of electricity.
And finally…
The Original Poop Bags contacted us this month after seeing our news story about Earth Rated’s 15-micron poop bags made from 65 per cent certified post-consumer recycled plastics, keen to mention its own 92 per cent plant-based pet waste bag that is US Department of Agriculture Certified Biobased.
The company claims its upcycled sugar cane bag offsets 92 per cent of the oil that goes into making traditional plastics bags, believing that it makes a lot more sense than creating a second single-use item, or recycling it into a multi-use item.
Its homepage features a large image of elephants, to promote charitable donations for Planting Peace – but at first glance it made me wonder just how big the company’s poop bags are!
