Private investment firm Sun European Partners LLP has added to its packaging holdings with the purchase of Britton Flexibles Ltd.
Winsford, England–based Britton is one of Europe’s largest polyethylene film producers. The company has been owned by HSBC Private Equity since a 2008 management buyout.
Britton specializes in flexible packaging, with extrusion, printing, lamination, and conversion capabilities. It has three plants in northern England producing cereal liner film, printed shrink wrap, banking coin bags and other products.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Britton Chief Executive Mike Clark said ownership by Sun European Partners will offer significant synergies to his firm.
Philippe Neuschaefer, vice president of Sun European Partners said, pointed out that in the past year alone, affiliates of his firm have completed more than half a dozen acquisitions in the packaging industry across Europe and the United States.
“The Britton Group, with its excellent track record in flexible plastic packaging, particularly extrusion, flexographic printing and conversion of flexible films, is an excellent fit with our existing European packaging businesses,” Neuschaefer said in a news release.
“We look forward to working with management to further enhance the Britton Group’s leading market position within the global packaging market.”
The investment firm’s other packaging holdings include Veriplast Solutions, a packaging company with 15 plants across Europe that makes shrink film, pallet wrap and thin–wall injection molded and thermoformed packaging.
Sun European Partners also owns the former Alcan Packaging Beauty business – now renamed Albéa Group – and in January it acquired England’s Betts Group.
London–based Sun European Partners is a subsidiary of Boca Raton, Fla.–based Sun Capital Partners Inc.
