AssiDomän acquires French corrugated packaging company
AssiDomän acquires French corrugated packaging company AssiDomän has today acquired the French paper and corrugated packaging group Lecoursonnois from the family share holders. Lecoursonnois consists of three wholly owned corrugated packaging plants, of which one is a sheet plant, and one wholly owned paper mill. The total volume 2 of corrugated board from the three plants amounts to 100 million m per year. The capacity of the paper mill is 85 000 tpy of waste-paper based liner and fluting. The group´s turnover for 1997 will be some SEK 500 million, and the number of employees is 450. All units are located in the Paris region. Included in the acquisition is also a 49.9 percent share in Giepac Bourgogne, consisting of five corrugated packaging plants, of which three are sheet 2 plants. Giepac Bourgogne, in the Dijon area, produces a total of 75 million m of corrugated board and has a turnover of some SEK 400 million. Also part of the deal are a 34 percent stake in a sheet plant in Grenoble, Cartonnages du Dauphiné, and a 20 percent stake in France-Flexo, a pre-print unit in the Paris area. "As a result of this strategically important acquisition of Lecoursonnois we will have our own corrugated board capacity on the French market, which is the third largest in Europe. The total consumption of corrugated board in France 2 is about four billion m per year. Together with our recent acquisition in Italy this strengthens our position considerably in the southern European region", explains AssiDomän´s President and CEO, Lennart Ahlgren. "With this deal we are also complementing our network of corrugated packaging units serving our pan-European customers. This network now contains close to 60 units in twelve countries, following a fast expansion during the last few years. Our production volume of corrugated packaging now amounts to 1,500 2 million m , or 810,000 tons" comments Ulf Kilander, President of AssiDomän Packaging. "With the addition of the waste paper mill in Lecoursonnois AssiDomän also increases its capacity for base paper for corrugated in Europe. Our total capacity after this acquisition is 1,180,000 tonnes of liner and fluting from the six mills in Sweden, France, Italy, the Czech Republic and Slovakia," says Mr. Kilander. AssiDomän is one of Europe´s leading forest products companies. Production is concentrated on packaging paper, packaging and sawn timber. The Group is Europe´s largest publicly held forest owner with 3.3 million hectares of productive forestland. Turnover in 1996 amounted to over SEK 19 billion. The Group has more than 18,000 employees, of which 11,000 work outside Sweden. The number of shareholders is nearly 340,000. AssiDomän AB Corporate Communications 4 June, 1997 For further information: Lennart Ahlgren, President and CEO Berit Hallberg, Senior Vice President, Corporate Communications Frans Benson, Investor Relations Tel: +46- 8 655 90 ------------------------------------------------------------ Please visit http://www.bit.se for further information The following files are available for download: http://www.bit.se/bitonline/1997/06/04/19990331BIT00200/bit0001.doc http://www.bit.se/bitonline/1997/06/04/19990331BIT00200/bit0002.pdf